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We Were All Already There
The Hyacinth Review
The Hyacinth Review

We Were All Already There

by
April 19, 2024
Meeting In Front Of The Television, Sašo Vrabič, 2004

A lifelong New Yorker, Lisa Romano Licht’s poetry and other…

July blackout, late ‘60s New York, some simmering, shimmering night. Outside my grandparents’ house, a cleansing dark prevailed—immense as a blackboard, streetlights erased. The grownups fished flashlights from the kitchen drawer, cut ghostly paths room to room. Matchbooks that we kids wouldn’t dare touch were struck and, like magic, glass-stuck candles bloomed. Everyone gathered around a transistor radio, antenna high, on the dining room table. Staticky link to any news. Their box floor fan’s hulk of a body had shuddered to a stop. Instead, a rubber wedge propped the screen door ajar; windows gaped open like obedient mouths. The TV sat blank-faced. And even though the phone still worked, who would we call? We were all already there. Our family’s voluminous voices, layered, interrupting, laughing—resounded loudly in the silence. Pajamas postponed, we relished the minutes ticking into hours. Even this late, we wouldn’t go home until normal flooded back on. Fireflies blinked their Morse code in peace while we were told: keep the refrigerator closed.
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A lifelong New Yorker, Lisa Romano Licht’s poetry and other work has appeared in The Hyacinth Review, Steam Ticket, The Westchester Review, San Pedro River Review, Blue Heron Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, Mom Egg Review and elsewhere, and was selected for The Year’s Best Dog Stories 2021 and Vita Brevis Press’ Nothing Divine Dies, both anthologies. Find her on Twitter:@LRLwrites

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