After the Power Outage

When the grid went dark, the apartment breathed, refrigerators fell silent like stunned choirs, and from every window the city spilled its stars, coins of cold fire we had forgotten to spend.

On the stairwell landing, strangers held their phones face down, small moons dimmed for once, listening to rain thread the fire escape with the patient hands of a harpist.

Somewhere a child named constellations wrong and still the sky accepted every guess; traffic lights dead at the crossing taught engines to bow and take turns.

By dawn the power returned with its usual hum, but kettles, routers, clocks came back altered: we had heard the night without machinery, and carried that quiet like water in both hands.