Doris Heitmeyer

Blackout

The dream is so familiar I must have had it before. Walking home at 3 a.m., I don’t see another soul on the streets. On empty avenues, traffic lights flash green, yellow, red. Then ahead of me the lights begin going out. I have not experienced such a blackout in twenty years. I leave the lighted area and enter the dark streets ahead. Tall buildings loom on either side; I sense rather than see them, a denser black closing in on a canyon of darkness. I feel on the brink of some adventure, like a child trespassing where it has been told not to go.

Waking, I realize I have again forgotten to look for the stars.

the hour before dawn:
black snowflakes
from a red sky