What Happens When You Leave Things

The power went out for thirty seconds.

I reached for the flashlight in the drawer—

the one I keep there. I'd reckoned

on it, once. Before

you know what's next.

I pressed the button. Nothing.

Took it to the window. The text

of the problem was there: the gutting

of both terminals, white-green crust

bloomed around the contacts, crystalline,

specific—the particular rust

that isn't rust, the alkaline

residue of a battery

left in a place I never checked.

I used the butter knife to free

it, pried it loose. The flecked

green came off on my thumb

and I washed it and it came back, faint,

and I washed it again. The dumb

patience of corrosion. The complaint

of a thing I thought I had ready.

The power came back on.

I stood at the sink, unsteady

in the usual way. The storm

reduced to rain by then.

The flashlight working now, set

on the counter. The drain. And when

I looked at my thumb—not yet

clean, not quite.