The Lightning We Keep

The cable guy came at 4 PM on a Tuesday, the same day Marcus left. I watched from the window as his van pulled up, the company logo peeling at the corners. He had dark hair that fell over his eyes when he worked, thick and careless, and for a moment I felt something sharp and unbidden—attraction, or maybe just the desperation to feel anything at all.

"You've got a loose connection," he said, his voice rough like gravel. "Been that way a while."

I wondered if Marcus had known. If that's what he was—a loose connection I'd failed to notice until everything went dark.

The cable guy worked with efficient hands, his baseball cap backward, revealing a neck that had seen sun. I watched him and thought: how many women has this week stood in their living rooms while their marriages unraveled in the background? I felt like a spy in my own life, gathering intelligence on the slow death of something I'd thought was permanent.

That night, lightning struck the oak tree in our backyard. I stood at the kitchen window, watching it burn, the wood crackling like applause. Marcus called at midnight. I didn't answer. Instead I watched the lightning bugs in the garden, their brief flickers a cruel parody of the real thing—ephemeral, misleading, gone before you could be sure you'd seen them at all.

The next morning, I found a baseball in the gutter. Marcus's from college, worn and scuffed. I held it, feeling the seams, and realized I'd never actually known what he loved about the game. Some things you live with for years without truly seeing.

The cable worked perfectly now. Channels came through clear, sharp, undeniable. I sat on the couch and watched nothing, everything suddenly, painfully visible.