The Day the City Fell

The Day the City Fell

From the porch of our house on the beach,
we could see the city fall.
I remember how my mother
dropped her coffee cup and gripped
the railing when our porch shook
and tilted with the bombs.
We could not hear
the screaming of the metal timbers or
the crunch of buildings crumpling.
We could just see the city,
its thin silver buildings squatting
in the faint haze across the bay,
and the gray cloud that rose up and
blotted out the sun. It was a toy city
like the ones I built in the sand
that my brother stomped.
"Mommy," I said, "Is the city going
to fall in the sea?" And in the slowly
rising water that came after,
they told us we must evacuate.
When the helicopter came to take us
away, as the swirling waves lapped
the white-painted porch steps,
we could not find my brother.
I cried because he was supposed to
take me sailing later, and the
black-gloved men would not let me
go back into the house to get my book.
At the Red Cross shelter we found
my brother, on a cot around the corner
with the huddled neighbors. I did not
recognize him in the scary rubber masks
they made us wear because of the diseases
in the air. I just wished I had my book,
because there were too many people
and the TV was too small and I had
already seen that movie.
The men at the door had guns and masks,
and my brother said, "They look like
stormtroopers from Star Wars."
I thought that was funny.
I laughed, but it wasn't like there
was a tidal wave or anything.
They should have let us go back
to our house. I guess they were afraid
a piece of the city might fall on us,
or something in the air might eat our skin.
I wanted to tell them that they were wrong,
that at our house the air was salty
and clean, and we had a Sunfish
with a yellow sail at our dock.
I wanted to tell them we had to go back,
because furniture and bookshelves are
not supposed to get wet. But the city fell
that day, and all my Nancy Drew books
that Grandma gave me got swallowed up.
I used to sculpt toy cities in the damp sand,
weaving little flags out of the
sharp yellow grass that grows on the dunes.
But when you see a real city fall
into the sea like that,
and imagine the pages of your books
waving wetly underwater where the fish
can't read them,
you do not want to build sand cities
anymore.


Sarah L. Tolcser

Posted over on The Pedestal Magazine