Voltage

The screen went black right as I typed the word

that would have ruined everything or saved it,

and now the hallway is a throat I’m sliding down.

I found the plastic casing under the sink,

gave it a frantic rattle, a prayer for a spark,

but the beam is a sick, jaundiced bruise

on the floorboards, pulling back into itself.

It’s dying in real-time, the filament starving,

and I’m three feet from the fuse box

while the dark settles in like wet wool,

leaving me alone with the sentence I never sent

and the dust motes floating in a circle

that’s getting too small to stand in.