It’s cold. Real cold. The kind of cold that seeps in through the pores and out through the fingers. I shiver in my blanket, turn the TV up to catch the rest of the news before the power outage starts.

“….President Biden has called for calm as a secessionist march through Flagstaff, Arizona, erupted into violence today. The crowd of 30,000 had assembled at the historic flagpole to hear influential leader James Buchan speak about employment, but his long delay in reaching the stage caused unrest among the protesters, who started rioting through the streets. The army have been called in to contain the situation, and it is believed that there have been shots fired….”

Fuck. Arizona now? I remember a family holiday to Sedona years ago, getting sunburned after I went for a long walk in the searing heat of the day and spending the rest of the afternoon in a cold bath cursing my stupidity. We’d had spicy ribs in the Red Planet café, and dad had spent the next day prodding my raw shoulders. It had seemed a lovely place, more hippyish and liberal than I’d expected the south to be, all aliens and wind chimes. Beautiful country, America like I’d really imagined it to look. And now it was going up too. Going the same way as Louisiana, New Mexico, Texas. Christ, Texas had been ugly. The lynchings, the burnings, the mob screaming and hollering as they chased that young guy down the street. The dead-eyed truth of rolling news- millions of people got to see the look of sheer terror in his eyes before he was engulfed by the furious tide.

Midnight, and all the lights go out. The TV, which had been cheerfully predicting more snow, dies with a static sound and crackles quietly to itself. I groan, lurch off the sofa and light a candle. Not much to really do now but sleep, anyway. Or at least try to. I pad through to the bedroom, trailing my blanket. Spread it out over the two duvets already there, my breath frosting in the bitter air. Cam is sound asleep, her gentle snoring and starfish position a testament to her incredible ability to sleep in such a way to guarantee me a really uncomfortable night. Fuck. She hits work early, if I wake her up and get her move across then we’ll have to talk, and she won’t sleep, and I’ll feel like a bitch. I stand by the bed, mind groggily working through ways I might manoeuvre her across without waking her up. The stupid things we do for love. Christ, it’s cold, I’m standing here freezing my ass off wondering how to get into fucking bed? Right, sleep it is then. Don’t be so fucking daft. I lift the covers slightly, moving like a pantomime villain as I try to contort myself under the covers. She shifts slightly, half-grunts, half-moans, shuffles, and I’m in. I blow out the candle, feel my extremities start to tingle with warmth in the sharp darkness. I lie awake, thinking about Arizona. If they go down too, what then? Nobody really thought secession was going to happen before Texas. Nobody. It was for history books and grade school, not the response a state gives after ’13.

I lie in the dark, and try not to think about ’13.