One month and one day after the fire
Tonight is one of those odd nights where I can smell the burning...the wood, plastic, roof and whatever else was eaten alive by flame.
The entire building has been knocked down, the charred pieces of 16 family's lives taken away by lines of trucks, but still it comes, the distinctive smell wafts into the apartment from the outside air, not letting me forget what happened...the pictures that will never escape my mind, the noise of engulfing flame, sirens, and the words within conversations around me, the frigid cold icing me yet not the flames that slightly warmed my face as I moved closer and closer until firefighters demanded I get away, the unexplainable horror taking over every inch of my body...
Before I even knew that a fire had already burned through three apartments and the roof of the next building, I could smell it immediately. Getting off the phone with my mother, exiting the study, and walking down the hall towards our door, the odor hit me square in the face. Something was not right. Something terrible was happening outside. Hours later at the hotel I decided to take a hot shower, an attempt at relaxation, though as soon as I got into the water, the smell I didn't even know was there came off of my skin and seemed to fill the bathroom. There was no escape...and until we leave this place, there won't be...if then; every time I look at pictures from the fire the smoke seems to creep back into the room.
The entire building has been knocked down, the charred pieces of 16 family's lives taken away by lines of trucks, but still it comes, the distinctive smell wafts into the apartment from the outside air, not letting me forget what happened...the pictures that will never escape my mind, the noise of engulfing flame, sirens, and the words within conversations around me, the frigid cold icing me yet not the flames that slightly warmed my face as I moved closer and closer until firefighters demanded I get away, the unexplainable horror taking over every inch of my body...
Before I even knew that a fire had already burned through three apartments and the roof of the next building, I could smell it immediately. Getting off the phone with my mother, exiting the study, and walking down the hall towards our door, the odor hit me square in the face. Something was not right. Something terrible was happening outside. Hours later at the hotel I decided to take a hot shower, an attempt at relaxation, though as soon as I got into the water, the smell I didn't even know was there came off of my skin and seemed to fill the bathroom. There was no escape...and until we leave this place, there won't be...if then; every time I look at pictures from the fire the smoke seems to creep back into the room.