Paranoia
The first reaction is a dumb bemusement
charged with startle, as in the opening lurch
of an earthquake when your senses, jolted, spike
their dials to max before the sense is grasped
of what just happened. Sudden silent dark,
the background mumble of the ageing fridge
and central heating gone, a curtain dropped
mid-act across the TV drama you were looking at
that’s left a jangling after-image in your eyes.
Is it just us? you call out to the house,
then shuffle feelingly towards the kitchen
where flames and candles are, and as you place
those tapered hopes on saucers, see how little light
in actual fact they give, there’s something else:
an edgy indignation starts to prickle,
as though your evening were a pair of wrestling pups -
both harmless and endearing - that some anxious fool
just threw cold water over. What a nerve! You glare
resentfully at the ceiling’s unlit bulbs,
slouch to the sofa where you’ll wait it out.
You sit. The quiet’s big. The lights are stubborn.
They don’t come on; they don’t come on; they don’t come on;
and hours in, you’re fretted by the questions
skulking in the darkest corners of the room:
like whether it’s such a bright idea to keep
the kindling hatchet hanging up so plainly there
behind the unlocked woodshed door; and where
that man from down the street - the one
who never smiles or cedes a courteous inch
of pavement when your morning transits graze -
just where he might be going as he passes
the bars of your low unlockable front gate
for the third time; and why it seems your restless hand
might take its ease if only it could settle
on something with a bit of heft to hold?
