Every Window on the Same Beat
every lit window on my walk home flickered the same blue. dim, bright, dim. then the streetlight did it too.
This one goes to a heavy place. If you’d rather not read it tonight, that’s a fine choice — support resources are here.
i missed the last bus, so i'm walking home. forty minutes, the part of the night where the city's basically yours. i usually like it. tonight i noticed the windows.
most of the building fronts are dark, but the ones that aren't all have that blue flicker — somebody's tv left on, somebody asleep in front of it. normal. except the flickers are together. all of them. dim, bright, dim, like the whole street's watching the exact same thing at two in the morning. fine. maybe everyone left the news on. maybe it's nothing.
then a block with no apartments, just a closed shop with the security light in the window, and that did it too. dim, bright, dim, on the same beat. i stopped. counted it out loud like an idiot. one. and two. and three.
here's the part i keep turning over. when i stopped walking, i caught myself still nodding along to it. i'd been matching my steps to the flicker for blocks and i never decided to. i started again, on purpose, deliberately out of step. and by the corner i was back on the beat. i don't remember choosing to be.
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