After the Streetlights Fail

When the streetlights fail, the map goes soft. Windows become black ponds, each one holding a private moon. Somewhere, a refrigerator keeps humming like a small, stubborn weather.

On the corner, the vending machines bloom with their blue electric fruit, and the sparrows settle into the pharmacy sign as if it were the last branch left in a winter that forgot its name.

I walk by touch, counting the rough seams in the sidewalk, the broken teeth of curb stones, while the dark arranges its furniture: mailboxes, hydrants, the patient ribs of trees.

Then one porch light wakes, then another. The block stitches itself back together with gold thread. Even the puddles remember how to shine, carrying the sky home in fragmented pieces.