December 23, 2025

power

There’s a power outage affecting approximately 116 customers. I am not
among them, having traveled four hundred miles south, but the alert comes
to my phone and I picture the trees whipping against the cables, the roil
of ocean, the dark house. Years ago, on a drive through the middle of Montana,
I soothed my loneliness by imagining the walls of my apartment kitchen
painted a buttery yellow called “Mayapple.” There was a place to return to,
and I would in a matter of months, and this thought was enough to carry me
into North Dakota and beyond. Even as I write this, I feel the brush in my hand
making careful shapes around the cabinetry, the corners by the ceiling. The joy
that blossomed in the room as the old layer disappeared under each stroke
until the room seemed as if it were vibrating like some newborn thing.
Soon, the update comes: Power’s been restored. And I think of a snow-
dusted road up north and the simultaneous brightness of 116 houses
turning back on. And my heart does that thing where it’s like a switch
has been flipped, where I can see, suddenly, that whatever’s ahead is
the opposite of loneliness, the road glowing in the twin lights of the words
“I can,” and there is nothing I’d rather do than press on, than keep going.