tikkunolam369 on Nostr: The Whole Street Was Never Dark # The Whole Street Was Never Dark Begin where the ...

The Whole Street Was Never Dark

# The Whole Street Was Never Dark

Begin where the last movement of the test left you: you carried the flame to somebody's dark, set it in a window, and walked home with the old bookkeeping still in your hand about how far one flame can reach — the bookkeeping that says a flame passed is a flame cut in half, and cut in half again at every hand, so that by the third yard it is an ember and by morning it is a memory. You went to bed anyway. That was last night's whole assignment, going to bed anyway. And this morning you are standing on your own porch with your coffee going cold, and you look up your street the way you have looked up a thousand streets without ever once doing the arithmetic, and today the arithmetic does itself: the porch lantern at the repainted house, lit; the kitchen window of the family who moved in a month ago and whose names you still have not learned, lit; the lamp …

(full piece on my write.as)