Dark Night

Storm clouds are backlit by shadowy gray moonlight, moonlight that doesn’t reach the ground. The sky is deserted and throughout Pitsane the electricity is out because of the storm. It is dark tonight. There is no light behind windows except for the dim illumination, an inscrutable glow of weak flames gulping wax and wic. Through the windows to my house my candles burn tall flames because they've nearly been burned to a roach. Occasionally there is a bright flicker when a moth flies into the fire (it seems they really do that) but the night is saturated shades of black and blue; it really is a perfect picture of darkness. Usually I cannot see outside at night because there is a glare from the light emanating from inside my house; my house becomes a fishbowl, lit from within, but tonight a vague silhouette of trees and tin rooftops are visible. Solid things are black. The sky and space between solids is blue. I think back to when there were national brown outs when I lived with my host family during training in Molepolole. At least once a week we sat together as my host sister ambled through the dark for candles. We were never prepared but she knew the house well and always found candles quickly. I'd get my handcrank flashlight and my host nieces would play with it, taking turns cranking the handle, marveling at what a clever contraption it was. We would talk. We would talk about nothing in particular but I find myself sitting in the house alone, not even the cat is around, thinking about the times I sat with my host family in the dark, when we stopped watching the TV. In the dark is when people beginning to see each other; we begin to notice the things we missed in the light. We are searching for the things we cannot see.
The sky looks empty and starless, but then a round yellow hole in a blank sky leaks a shaft of light just as the power flickers back and collapses again. Soon after, my refrigerator groans back to life and the lights illuminate. The windows reflect the glare and show an image of myself against the cold glass windows. I close my curtains so that tsotsis cannot look in and I will resume distracting myself in the glare. A book. A novel. A movie. A couple songs on my Ipod. Once again, I am a cardboard cut out in a backlit box. I'll go to bed thinking to myself what I fool I was—the sky is never empty, for the blanker it looks, the more layers of clouds there are covering what’s cloaked underneath.