Sunday 15 April 2012

An Outage


Tight deadlines kept looming in. Her planner looked disgruntled with over-booked appointments. Work was almost always on her mind.

He was working on his PhD in Philosophy and had gotten used to having conversations with Descartes and Nietzche at the dinner table.

It was 8:30pm. She stepped into the apartment and walked straight to the kitchen, scrolling through the New York Times on her iPad. She gave him a wry smile, mechanically picked out a pack of frozen selects and dumped them into the microwave.

“Wow! They’re expecting a complete power outage in the city tonight!!” she gasped, mentally calculating the amount of work she had left until the next day.

Before he could respond to her, the lights made a slight hissing sound and the bulbs began to flicker. Within seconds they sat there in total eclipse, fumbling around familiar objects within the unaccustomed shadow within their space.

He reached out for the first drawer but couldn’t locate the torch or the spare candles that were still there before her last birthday. She panicked and grumbled, irritated at him for not being prepared for this in time.

He came over to her side and held her by the shoulders, concerned that she might trip over the paraphernalia in the dark. They stood there in complete silence, which was only broken by the soft whistles of the wind that came from the draft above the kitchen table.

He calmly pulled out his cellphone as his guiding light, and rummaged through the refrigerator for baby spinach, plum tomatoes, red onions and cottage cheese, dicing the ingredients before they were tossed in with olive oil and some seasoning.

He poured two glasses of zinfandel with their meal, and switched on her eReader.

Eating quietly with make-shift candles in the dark, they sat there in absolute serenity having a meaningful iPad-light dinner.



*For 3WW
**Photo Credit


 







Shutterbug Souvenirs



Times Square

They stood there
Captured
In the middle of the crowd.

A moment of bliss
Seized
Amidst seconds of pretend poses.

The frenzy of travel
Stamped
Across their postcard-couple faces.

Episodes of uninhibited joy
Confined
Within the boundaries of the four by four.

With "I heart New York"
Marked
To sign off that adventure.

One that began eight years ago,
Sealed
With knickknacks of vows made in the Big Apple.

Trinkets of fond memorabilia, now
Boxed
In a carton of cardboard from the past.

Little pieces of glossy paper that stood
Unfazed
Next to the menagerie by the mantlepiece.