Tendril, 2020

‘In the darkness, familiar places are psychologically changed; most of one’s certainty about what is there has been removed as you can only see a few yards ahead. When your eyes have little information, your imagination takes over and fills in the gaps. The barrier between rationality and unconsciousness becomes more permeable and some part of you regresses to something more childlike or primal’

Jasper Goodall: Twilight’s Path

I Didn't Die Last Night

The current arrived wearing the face of chance, a silent predator slipping beneath the skin of the house, testing its bones with invisible fire.

It began with the breaking of a tree limb,

its weight surrendering to gravity, falling across the power lines like an axe laid against the artery of the neighborhood.

One broken branch became a messenger of chaos.

The current played its cruel game— I dare you. One heartbeat.

One spark. One breath between ordinary living and an obituary no one was prepared to write.

The smallest things fell first. A lamp surrendered its light. Faithful appliances gave up their usefulness, each one warning us that something unseen had awakened.

Our home became a body in distress, its veins carrying more than they could bear. We were no longer its keepers, only passengers inside a vessel whose pulse had turned against itself.

I pulled plugs from the walls as though drawing arrows from wounded flesh, then fell to my knees,

where fear strips pride to the marrow.

I prayed for mercy, for wisdom that comes too late, for forgiveness of ignorance, of the quiet omissions that gather unnoticed until they stand before us

wearing the face of consequence.

Then came the answering lights.

The electric company arrived like watchmen crossing the darkness. Their hands knew what ours could not. Patiently, they followed the hidden language of wire and current

until they uncovered two broken connections—

wounds left by the fallen limb, small fractures capable of becoming a funeral.

With practiced precision they mended what could not be seen, restoring the pulse without ceremony, asking nothing except room to work.

Five houses stood together on the edge of the same unseen cliff.

Five families

were given another night.

Sleep would not come. My mind wandered through rooms still echoing with the sound of what almost happened. Silence itself felt fragile, like glass

waiting for another crack.

Morning arrived without applause.

Steam rose from a cup of tea— honey, cinnamon, and lemon— a quiet communion for someone who had awakened to another borrowed day.

I walked the house, counting losses that money could replace, making a list that included a new pair of kneepads,

because gratitude, I have learned, sometimes leaves bruises.

Tonight the current hums again,

its voice soft as innocence, pretending it has never threatened to become a flame.

But I know better.

I know how thin the veil is between shelter and ash,

between routine and ruin, between this breath and the last.

So tonight I will count my blessings like candles still burning after the storm.

And if grace allows me

another quiet evening,

I will breathe one long sigh—

not because danger has vanished,

but because mercy arrived first.