Half Glass Full

Lights went off a few minutes before midnight. 

It's a Blackout, as I have suspected. Feeds from Twitter points to an island-wide power shutdown. It's the second time this week, and skeptics once more speculate a no-election plot. But who doesn't want an election? Not the president. The nation has been conditioned to vote, and to deny the privilege, is trouble waiting to be unleashed.

The animated banter continues to trickle on social media. What's different these days is that people are always connected. One will never feel alone - even in the dark. I was getting ready to leave the room; to tell my mom to vacate the master's bedroom. I can always give up my quarters if it spares the kids - and the matriarch the suffocating conditions there.

I can always lay a mat and sleep in the driveway.

But more than anything, I was keenly aware that the metropolis is blanketed in darkness. The skies - for the first time in recent memory - will have dominion over the luminous cityscape. I would star gaze to my heart's content, and maybe - their fleeting distance would take away the annoyance I feel within.

"Luzon-wide ulit ang brownout" I told my mother.

"Bakit daw?" asked my sister. 

"Hindi ko alam. Power deficiency sabi ng Meralco." Power deficiency my ass. At twelve midnight?

I didn't offer my room as I felt the cool breeze still lingered from the AC. But when I returned to my room to put something to cover my upper body, the lights flickered, the electric fan whirred  - and for a blip that would probably be forgotten when I wake up tomorrow - life returns as if it never fluctuated.