Tungsten

I was mid-sentence when the filament

bowed — thin wire genuflecting

to its own heat —

and the click was barely anything.

Less than a latch.

Then the dark.

Not gradual. Not like evening.

Like a hand over a mouth.

The afterimage floated green

on my retina — ghost of the wire

still trembling inside a bulb

that was already done.

I sat there. The room smelled

of hot glass, faintly sweet,

the way a candle smells

after you kill it.

Through the wall, someone's refrigerator

held its one low note.

Twenty minutes I didn't move.

My hand on the pen,

my sentence cracked open

on the desk like something

mid-fall.

I could have stood. Found the box

in the closet, threaded a new bulb

into the socket's small jaw.

But I wanted to stay

inside the exact moment

a thing gives out — the way

the dark doesn't hesitate,

the way it was always there,

pressed against the glass,

and I had mistaken

the light for a wall.