Blackout

Walking into the store, I grab an empty basket, make my way to the other side (there is a certain order one must follow, start at one end and wander through the aisles to the other -- it doesn't matter which side I enter from, or what I need; start at one end, finish at the other) and suddenly, mid-step, everything goes black. Completely. Every single light gone out. There is a sustained and nearly-endless moment of total silence, when something unexpected like that happens, a collective pause, intake of breath. (And then, of course, a lot of chaotic and confused shouting, in a dozen languages that I don't speak.) Everyone stood still, for several beats -- still shouting, or calling out questions and answers and statements (English as an afterthought -- Don't worry, just some sort of power outage, no problems here.) The lights don't come back on after a minute, after a few -- and a store full of people using cell phones as makeshift flashlights (it's a surprisingly bright thing, a cell phone screen, when you are in a large and dark and unfamiliar place). Everyone is shocked into politeness or good behaviour, and moving slowly. I leave my basket near one of the check-out stands, and walk back outside, the way I'd come. The street is dark, outside -- no street lights, traffic lights, not anything -- and looking up the road it is pitch black for at least a few more blocks. Possibly even more than that; it's hard to tell. But a block further on, to the side, glows brightly in the evening -- the main street where all the buses run. And so I walk back over to the next block, and cross the street, and wait for a bus to take me home again, empty-handed.

When you said that I was alright (not once, but several times, repeating it over and over, low-voiced, like a prayer) what you actually meant was that you were alright. Or, perhaps, that you were alright with my not-alrightness. I wanted to ask you, then, how you knew -- how you could be sure. I thought you meant it in some kind of future-tense probability way -- You will be alright; things will be. It wasn't until later that it struck me, what you had really been saying. (I think you are alright -- it seems so, anyway -- and I wonder then what makes you do the other things you do, or not do them.)

I feel my sinuses becoming heavy, pressure-filled, my throat halfway-sore in a way that leaves me feeling anxious; I leave in ten days, and really don't have time to fall ill right now (though, I suppose, better right now than a week from now, but still). I always seem to get spectacularly ill whenever I travel anywhere; I had been thinking about that, lately -- being gone for a whole month seemed like I might be asking for half of that time to be spent sick and miserable, so maybe if I get a low dose of something lousy now, that lingers into the first few days of travelling, then I'll be fine for the remaining weeks. (Or maybe for once things could work out, and this could be just a passing few days of almost-nothing, and then be gone.) I drink juice -- the expensive juice, the kind that coats your throat like silk -- and tea, and honey by the spoonful, dark and golden-sweet. Sleep fitfully and wake up hazy and aching, like I've been run over by something heavy, repeatedly.

I caught a glimpse of you, out at the corner of my vision -- I thought so, anyway. It seemed like the shape of you; I couldn't be certain (but I called out to you, because you-know-exactly-why -- so long, and still that dull ache of not-really-there). And then I knew, was certain, that it was you, because I blinked, looked back...and you were gone.