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Falling | Mar 13 2002

I was asleep, dreaming, when I heard this tremendous roar, and the building shook, and I knew that I was about to be vaporized. I woke without opening my eyes, without moving, and waited for the light, the fire, to engulf me.

I did not think, as one might imagine, of what had led to this moment, or of the prophesies, or even of my loved ones asleep in their beds. Instead I lay there waiting, or falling—it felt more like falling than waiting, like falling and waiting to reach the bottom of something.

I never reached it.

I live on a street that begins from the exit ramp of the Williamsburg bridge. In the early morning, the traffic is intense. The thing that woke me was a truck roaring past my window.

It’s not the first time this has happened. And before I lived here, it was other things. Periodically over the last twenty-five years or so, I’ve woken believing I was about to be incinerated in a great rolling wave of fire, wider than a city and taller than any building.

It used to terrify me, I used to lay there sweating, my heart pounding… but no longer; or at least not beyond the moment I realize my mistake.

If that is what this is: a mistake.