Let There Be Light

The papers lay between them at the dining table, near the window where the rain had already begun to blur the glass.

Her fingers hovered over the pen...still, uncertain, almost surrendered.

The lights died.

For a moment, only rain remained, steady, uninvited, filling every silence they had ever avoided.

A flash of lightning carved the room into memory, and then he struck a match, lighting a small candle between them.

They didn’t move from their chairs.

Just two silhouettes now, seated across years of unfinished sentences.

“Do you remember… that first house?” he said quietly.

“The one that leaked… and you used to run for a bucket every time it rained.”

A breath left her, half laugh, half ache.

“I remember,” she said, softer than the rain.

Thunder rolled close enough to make the table tremble.

Neither of them let go of it this time.

Her hand reached across before she could think better of it.

He met it halfway.

The pen fell sideways, rolling to a stop near the edge of the paper, forgotten.

A tear slipped onto the ink, smudging a signature that was never completed.

When the power returned, it filled the room but something warmer had already taken its place.