Smoke

I woke up smelling smoke. There was a fire somewhere. Was it here?

It was still dark, maybe 5:00 or so this morning. Over the roof of the house across the street, I could see a beginning glimmer of sunrise but slight, so slight.

In the bathroom, I leaned into the opened window, pressed my nose against the screen, wanting the smoke to be from outside somewhere, someone else’s home, a peril not here.

Back in bed, I woke my husband to ask him if he smelled smoke and he said yes but it wasn’t our smoke because the smoke alarms would have gone off. And I wished hard that the smoke was someone else’s catastrophe and then I went back to sleep.

When I woke again, the sky was pink over the neighbor’s house, brilliant and glowing until it started to get dark like dawn had opened and then pulled back. I closed my eyes and waited for coffee, now worried for the day, afraid of what might happen next.

I am going to be afraid all day. I knew that. Nothing would abate the fear brought by the smoke except the day having been gone through.

When night came, the fear would be gone. I believed that. Unless there was more smoke coming from somewhere. Not from here. From somewhere else.

_______________

Photo by Julián Gentilezza on Unsplash