Blackout Catalog

The library buckled into a hush, fluorescents dead, the aisles a riverbed. Emergency LEDs made islands of the stacks, each spine a small, lawful flare.

Somewhere a generator coughed; it did not start. We stood in our breath like people at a train stop, listening to a rain that never arrived, hands grazing the alphabet for balance.

I opened a book and the page gave off heat, not literal, but the kind from a kiln of names. Sentences walked out, barefoot, across the tables, their silhouettes mapping constellations we forgot.

When the lights returned, the room exhaled, and the stories retreated into their paper rooms. Still, a thread of dark stayed in my sleeve, a catalog card for the night we read by nerve.