5 PM, POMPEI
Sandy Smithers
On this summer afternoon the bus takes us down Vesuvio Road, the ruins of an incinerated civilization sheltered by the beginning of a promising sunset. A tired-looking lady sits beside me. “Where are you visiting from?” I smile.
“Ukraine,” and she gazes at me, preventing my most likely petty response.
“My roommate was from Kyiv.” We both smile.
“A building across from mine got hit this week.”
My throat is captive, tight in silence.
“–Both my husband and dog are unharmed. He had to stay; men are not to leave the motherland.”
We are both facing the window, leaving the top of the volcano behind as we return back to the city. A black and white movie is playing on the small, antique TV above the bus driver, and the seats are electric blue and pink fluff.
“I see.”
“Strange, to travel in such circumstances, I am sure you wonder–”
I nod.
“–The unimaginable can happen to you too. You are not different from me. You could wake up in the middle of the night to a siren, spend the following hours lying on your bathroom floor holding the love of your life and your dog, wondering who could hate you this greatly.
What is it about us that is so, disposable, do you ever wonder?”
Of course not, tragedy is an alien until the heat makes us drop the match.Now the roads are starting to show landslides caused by Vesuvio´s anger, old lava formations now covered with years of dirt and vegetation, but still, 1,944 years later, the damage is there to be witnessed, the damage is there to be mourned.
“Listen, girl, I do not know who you are outside this bus, where you call home, who you call love. But can I just say: never feel guilty for your happiness, no one will apologize for coming and ripping it away.”
Now her words were coming at me with urgency. Electric tears encapsulated between her eyelashes.
“Death does not wait, girl, so do not wait.”
“I won’t.”
She nodded in approval.
Along came her stop, and she got off the bus. We start and I wave through the window. An orange-blood sunset conquers the city of Pompei and the night settles, but I don't.
