The great summer blackout of 2003
This is an excerpt from the Statement’s annual Literary Issue. Click below to read more.
Originally published Feb. 25, 2015
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The Statement is The Michigan Daily’s weekly news magazine, distributed every Wednesday during the academic year.
led to basins of water settling around the house, dry mouths from emptying ice cream, clothing changes in gray rooms. New discoveries were made: the temperature differential between doorknobs, the divots in bare floorboards, unexpected extra steps in stairwells. Bodies found reasons to stay still, breathe stale air, rub at the fuzzy gray matter of brain.
We came to understand the pounds in pregnant power lines, sagging along our horizon. We came to understand our magnetized poles, pulling us from the solitude of white noise. At night, we leave our beds be, gather in the center of the living room with cool sheets. We build fortresses with our bodies, tumbling together in sleep. Mothers next to grown daughters, traveling sons, estranged fathers next to mothers.
In suburban areas, the Milky Way and orbiting satellites wink at the naked eye. In the absence of particulate light pollution, we see the hurling galaxy of Andromeda come for us.