mind of darkness

caught mid-phone-word (rarity enough) by sudden unpremonitioned black followed only a heart murmur later by something decidedly un-murmurary. with a power outage encompassing, visibly, what seems to be more than the co-op (it reflects an element: to believe, in an instant, that only one's lamp is extinguished—until the room is seen and known, the house, the adjacent one, the murky sea and the starless firmament. caught in circularity of one form, we must be forced into another) this is confirmed audibly as the fraternities on either side erupt—and the block is extended into 2D as shots of some sort ring out via percussive trash receptacles in the alley, whose opposite side is also unlit. it is unclear as to whether the joyful and immediate noise is an attempt (ah, the woeful typicality of fallacy...) to render something causal that might have happened otherwise or inevitably.

if an aspect of homo sapiens could be (besides conceptually) pre-evolutionary—which is to say, according to instinct of a certain form—such was that burst of reaction. then the later, later, hesitant emergent creeping which keeps to baseboards and handrails, along the green-carpeted floor, of our furtive contribution to humanity echoes decidedly of troglodyte. with flashlights from the abundant supply, indicated and explained, we stand for a moment St. Lucia-like at intervals on the curved staircase before darting back into warrens and shrouds. our head-counting and inquiry is barely heard; at its core, though, concern does merely work itself out.

he thought he could exist without light, alone and ever, because—lo—he turned them off each night and, indeed (willful soul), sometimes when it was not night and, besides that, he closed his eyes. when the will means nothing, the difference between chosen and imposed dark: residual gleam and timing. it's impossible to walk into a familiar room, even knowing full well that the usual rules no longer apply, and not reach for switch or string, knob or chain. when normalcy whirs back into operation, all of the bulbs await it, having been flipped on and forgotten (the urge to conservation reaches afterwards and shallow, if at all).

on the other hand, it takes a minute (but only a short one, admittedly) to lace together the cogent salvation: the speakers for which i have not purchased the necessary adaptor are running quite well on rechargeable batteries. as such, they are possibly the sole un-tinny origin/means of music for at least a block and are, incidentally and of course, demonstrating said capacity and status.

now, after an hour, i have a flashlight side-lying on the far corner of my desk, pointing its beam towards the window in whose reflection it flickers because of the fingers, monstrously elongated and ghostly blackened, and their movements in its particled path, pecking a still-lit keyboard between the source of light and its concentric, concentrated and yet eerily wan, cast.

outside: the winking red and blue of patrol cars circumnavigating (passing only leaping flame bordered by stones) what reckons and salves itself a wasteland.