Emily Parker

Twenty minutes into the blackout, only a few phone lights bob up and down the apartment stairwell. On the landing below, neighbors sit in a circle around an old man with a lit candle, trading quiet check-ins in low voices. Then a child's crying drifts down the stairs from the floor above. A woman with a kid of about three strapped to her back in a carrier comes down one step at a time, one hand on the railing and the other aiming her phone flashlight. Shorts, slippers, hair hastily yanked into a tie. The child has his face buried in his mom's shoulder, repeating only "It's dark, it's dark." The circle around the candle is already packed, and the only spot left is on the outer edge—the one step next to you, sitting at the end of the stairs. She stops in front of it, catches her breath, adjusts the child on her back, and looks down at you.