After the Blackout, Tomatoes

The city went dark like a theater exhaling. On the roofs, rain barrels held a small weather of stars. I climbed seven flights with a candle in a jar, and heard the elevators sleeping in their shafts.

In the blackout garden, tomato vines kept breathing, leaf-fur wet, stems warm as wrists. Beyond them, avenues were black rivers without engines, yet the basil rang green in the candle’s minor key.

Somewhere a child practiced scales on an unplugged piano, counting by touch, not sound. The moon slipped between antennas like a coin through fingers, and every window became a patient, unlit eye.

At dawn the grid returned with its metallic birdsong, fridges, routers, the obedient blue blink. But on my tongue stayed the taste of night-grown fruit, a bright red syllable the morning could not automate.