The Great Escape of 2008
She asked me if the title “everyone made it out alive”
was about the fire.
She wondered if I had dreams
reoccurring about the catastrophe,
assuming that I was still suffering from PTSD.
I’m not sure that I ever fully dealt
with the effect of that plight
and the stress that it triggered later.
My heart still breaks when I think of that night…
“The Great Escape of 2008”
…that’s what we called it, anyway.
We jumped from the flames
but it still engulfed our hope.
We lost our housing but more importantly,
we lost our home.
The walls that encased our friendship,
the floor that kept our memories from hitting the ground
had burned and collapsed and…oh God, the sound…
The melody of billowing flames and screeching cries,
a harmony of shattering glass and weeping eyes.
The sirens screamed in our heads for hours
for days, for nights, for weeks.
You wouldn’t believe how often those haunting frequencies
interrupted our sleep.
Days after, as we tried to rest our heads
on unfamiliar beds,
we strained our necks to comprehend
just how we wound up in this mess.
We did it wrong; we lost control.
Instead of pulling our friendships in closer,
we let them slip through our fingers.
We let our capsized hearts sink deeper.
But no, I don’t have dreams about the fire anymore.
And though I tense each time I hear
the shrieking of a smoke detector,
I no longer suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Though we watched as our world burned that night,
our personal belongings could never measure
up to the grim possibility of losing eachother.
Our bodies escaped unharmed from
that third story smoke chamber,
and we’re still breathing three years later.
So no, Mom, I’m alright. I promise I’m fine.
But we’ll never be the same after that night.
was about the fire.
She wondered if I had dreams
reoccurring about the catastrophe,
assuming that I was still suffering from PTSD.
I’m not sure that I ever fully dealt
with the effect of that plight
and the stress that it triggered later.
My heart still breaks when I think of that night…
“The Great Escape of 2008”
…that’s what we called it, anyway.
We jumped from the flames
but it still engulfed our hope.
We lost our housing but more importantly,
we lost our home.
The walls that encased our friendship,
the floor that kept our memories from hitting the ground
had burned and collapsed and…oh God, the sound…
The melody of billowing flames and screeching cries,
a harmony of shattering glass and weeping eyes.
The sirens screamed in our heads for hours
for days, for nights, for weeks.
You wouldn’t believe how often those haunting frequencies
interrupted our sleep.
Days after, as we tried to rest our heads
on unfamiliar beds,
we strained our necks to comprehend
just how we wound up in this mess.
We did it wrong; we lost control.
Instead of pulling our friendships in closer,
we let them slip through our fingers.
We let our capsized hearts sink deeper.
But no, I don’t have dreams about the fire anymore.
And though I tense each time I hear
the shrieking of a smoke detector,
I no longer suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Though we watched as our world burned that night,
our personal belongings could never measure
up to the grim possibility of losing eachother.
Our bodies escaped unharmed from
that third story smoke chamber,
and we’re still breathing three years later.
So no, Mom, I’m alright. I promise I’m fine.
But we’ll never be the same after that night.