{"sf1_id":1702504,"sf2_id":"ZmM4LWep","title":"I Switch Off All The Lights","author":"Rob MacWolf","words":304,"posted_at":"2021-04-03T06:18:00.000Z","tags":["Autobiographical","Iambic pentameter","Poetry","blank verse"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1702504-i-switch-off-all-the-lights","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/s/ZmM4LWep","image_url":"https://cdn.sofurryfiles.com/submissions/thumbnails/cd/b1/cdb12f75-75d9-43f7-a22b-77158edf181b","description":"#19 of poetry\n\n2020 was also the year I found out, after the fact, that one of my siblings had married a literal, self-identified, white supremacist.\nMy parents went to that wedding. They didn't go to mine, because it would've been sinful to attend a gay marriage.\nBut that one was fine.\n2020 was also the year I decided I was changing my last name.\nAlmost through the heavy stuff. Two left.","content":"I switch off all the lights. Those that I love\n\nAre all abed, both in the other room\n\nAnd all across the city that I love.\n\nI see my way across the meagre room\n\nAnd to the too-tall curtains by the light\n\nOf thrift-store stained-glass lamp, by oven light,\n\nBy streetlight spilling through venetian blinds,\n\nAnd by the moon through torn translucent clouds.\n\nShe also does not sleep. She also walks\n\nTo look upon the city that she loves.\n\nAnd wakeful too, past midnight, not so far\n\nAway as I must wish that they could be\n\nAre those whose minds are bent on ending me\n\nAnd those abed I love, and I suppose\n\nThe city too, for sin of sheltering\n\nAnd being loved by such as me and mine.\n\nAmong them there those that once I thought\n\nMy kin. This thought does not keep me from sleep.\n\nNor does the thought of ever looming war,\n\nBut what comes after? Will they still hang lamps\n\nOn balconies? Will chocolate still be shared?\n\nWill they lay gameboards in the upper rooms?\n\nWill they still talk of otherworldly grief\n\nIn teashops? Will they walk beneath the trees\n\nAnd savor the green coolness of the shade?\n\nHow many homes that I had learned to love\n\nAre lost to me. I may yet lose this too.\n\nNo power have I to amend this world,\n\nTo stay or slow this coming tide. I can\n\nNot even trust to save those that I love.\n\nEternity and Time may know, the Moon\n\nMay guess, my city's fate. But I can only pray,\n\nWith all the lights switched off, as lights must be,\n\nThat if it must be lost, someone, someday\n\nWill, seeing in the ruin some small sign--\n\nA lantern on a balcony, perhaps--\n\nThen understand that once this place was loved.\n\n  \n  \n\n","series":{"name":"poetry","previous":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1702502-i-think-about-revenge-most-every-day.json","next":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1702506-curse-on-a-deserving-land.json"}}