For months, I complained about my neighbor’s lights.
Every single night, without fail, his apartment glowed like a lighthouse. The kitchen. The hallway. The bedroom. Even past midnight, long after the rest of the building had gone dark, his windows burned bright.
I told myself it was wasteful. Careless. Inconsiderate.
From my bedroom across the courtyard, the glow spilled through my curtains. I would mutter under my breath while closing the blinds, annoyed that someone could be so indifferent to electricity bills — and to neighbors who preferred the comfort of darkness.
Eventually, I confronted him.
He listened politely in the stairwell, nodded once, and said nothing. The lights stayed on.
That silence irritated me almost as much as the brightness.
Then came the blackout.
It happened suddenly one evening just after dinner. The entire block went dark at once — no gradual dimming, no warning flicker. Just instant stillness. Elevators stalled. Air conditioners sighed into silence. The city, usually humming, felt suspended.
Curious, I walked to the stairwell window that overlooked the courtyard.
Most apartments were pitch black.
Except one.
His.
A soft, flickering glow spilled across his kitchen walls. Not electric — candlelight.
I leaned closer to the glass.
He was sitting alone at his kitchen table, surrounded by small candles placed carefully in a loose circle. The shadows danced across his face as he bent forward, winding a small mechanical clock with steady, practiced hands.
The rest of the building felt abandoned, but his apartment looked… deliberate.
After adjusting the clock, he set it gently beside a framed photograph. He straightened it, almost reverently. Then he sat back in his chair, hands folded, watching the candlelight reflect against the glass.
No television.
No radio.
No phone in his hand.
Just the faint ticking of the clock and the soft shimmer of flame.
I had always assumed he feared the dark. That the constant lighting was some kind of stubborn habit or eccentric quirk.
But what I saw that night didn’t feel like fear.
It felt like ritual.
I stayed at the window longer than I meant to. There was something intimate about the scene, something I hadn’t earned the right to witness — yet couldn’t look away from. His movements were slow, methodical, as though he were following a routine memorized long ago.
There was no restlessness in him.
Only quiet.
The next morning, when the power returned, I ran into Mrs. Alvarez from downstairs. We chatted about the outage, about spoiled groceries and stalled elevators.
Then I mentioned him — the candles.
Her expression softened.
“You didn’t know?” she asked gently.
I hadn’t.
His wife had passed away the previous year.
During her illness, she had developed a deep fear of the dark. Hospitals had unsettled her. Night frightened her. So he left the lights on — every room, every hallway — so she would never have to walk through shadows alone.
Even after she was gone, he never turned them off.
“He says the apartment feels less empty that way,” Mrs. Alvarez told me quietly. “The lights make the silence easier.”
The candles during blackouts weren’t random.
They were continuity.
They were a promise kept even when the electricity failed.
I walked back upstairs differently that day.
All the nights I had judged him replayed in my mind — me behind my curtains, labeling his story as inconsiderate without ever asking what it held. I had reduced his grief to glare. I had mistaken devotion for wastefulness.
That evening, when dusk settled in, I didn’t close my blinds.
Across the courtyard, his windows lit up again. Steady. Warm. Unwavering.
For the first time, the brightness didn’t irritate me.
It comforted me.
It reminded me that love doesn’t always disappear when a person does. Sometimes it lingers in habits. In routines. In lights left on long after they are needed.
And sometimes what looks like carelessness from a distance is actually someone holding onto a promise in the only way they know how.