She’d written that line after her grandmother’s funeral. Her grandmother, who used to say that electricity was just memory traveling too fast to see. “You can’t catch it, baby. But you can feel it when it arcs.”
Electric Arches — a digital chapbook she’d made in college, back when she believed poetry could reroute traffic jams and turn chain-link fences into power lines. electric arches pdf
Outside, a transformer blew. The room went dark. But her laptop screen flickered—not dying, but brightening, the PDF expanding beyond its margins. From the screen rose a faint crackling sound, like radio frequencies stitching themselves together. And then, in the air above her keyboard, a small arc of blue light bent into the shape of a doorway. She’d written that line after her grandmother’s funeral
Mara didn’t move. She’d written about electric arches, but she’d never expected them to open. But you can feel it when it arcs
Mara scrolled down. Each poem was paired with a digital sketch: a streetlamp blooming into a dandelion, a subway spark turned into a constellation. She’d made the PDF during a heatwave, alone in her dorm room, while protests echoed from downtown. She remembered thinking: If I can’t fix the world, at least I can draw a better one over it.