June 23

Are lives intertwined? Are our fates tied together with unbreakable bands of love and hope that stretch across cities, across continents, across time itself? What distinguished one life from another? Who decides who lives, and who perishes in the unpredictable tragedies that happen to all? Who chose to keep me alive while killing all others in my city? Was it God, fate, or just the luck of the draw? Is it my destiny, my ‘purpose’ to be left wandering the destroyed streets of my home, stumbling over the uneven, crumbled pavement, searching for life? Laughable. If this is my destiny I must be some saint. Fate is out there, looking down and saying ‘Oh, this will help the world so much if I leave this girl in a dead city. It will solve all of our problems.’

                I laugh out loud as I write this. I have no purpose. And even if I did, I couldn’t fulfill it by living today. There is nothing to be done, nothing can be helped. I am alone, left to face this destroyed world. But what use is someone alone? What use is one without another, for we are nothing without the help of our fellows. The only ‘fellows’ I have here are the fallen buildings, ruins of this once great city.  I have not found any alive, and only one dead, the rest must have been buried in pieces of fallen buildings. I didn’t know the woman, which is understandable considering this is a city- was a city- of 8 million people. I carried her to a spot relatively free of rubble and buried her, a lengthy process taking over three hours. I completed it this morning and have sat by the grave all day. Sitting, unfeeling, unthinking. Doing anything to keep from thinking of my family, of my friends. My enemies even.

June 24

                I was riding the bus to school that morning, staring out the window and listening to my I-pod. The usual chatter was going on around me, filled with gossip, curses, and giggles. The sound of cars on the busy streets outside. Music, traffic, classmates. Familiar, petty, it seemed at the time. Then a new sound joined the others, a far away whistle, scream you could say. Like one of those jet planes, but in several seconds escalated to the volume of a freight train a foot from you. Relentless, piercing. I could see my classmates around me; their mouths open in screams whose sound was lost in the terrible sound that came next. I cannot compare it to anything but a single wall of sound that blew over me, causing me to clap my hands over my ears and fall to the floor.  A hand yanked me up and I saw everyone was evacuating the bus and running. The boy who pulled me up said something but I couldn’t hear him over the sound. He pulled me out the door and we ran as fast as we could.  After several moments of running and seeing bombs exploding one after another behind us he pulled me into an empty building and into a sort of bomb shelter. It was much quieter in here and I could kind of hear him if he shouted.

                “Stay in here!” he yelled. “I’m going to see if I can find more people.”

                “Wait!” I screamed, “Who are you?”

                “Charlie Henderson!” he yelled back and ran out the door of the shelter.

                I stayed curled up in that shelter for hours, listening to the bombs around me and praying. Funny because I had never been religious. Charlie never came back. After the sound of the bombs died I crawled slowly out of the shelter, realizing the worst sound of all. Silence. Complete, utter, silence. I couldn’t open my mouth, couldn’t breathe, or cry out.  Flames jumped around fallen buildings, eating, burning away at the buildings I had known.

I walked to my apartment building and found it broken into huge chunks of brick and metal on the ground but still I made no sound. I walked amongst the rubble of it, searching for anything familiar, something of my home. But there was nothing, nothing at all.

That was my first time remembering since the incident. I hold my head in my hands as I remember the pain as great as it was at first. A cry escapes me for the first time since it happened and tears flow down my cheeks.