It was a new day, a new year. The anticipated change had finally come and while it was still too soon to tell, though things were completely different, they didn’t feel any different at all. It’s not as if a portal had opened up which we had all collectively walked through and somehow all the pain of the past year had been washed away. Too many folks had been killed, had died during the pandemic; too many hates had been aired by a supremacy that had been given the color white but had marred, shaped, and influenced all of us, irrespective of color.
Disappointment had entered the collective conscious and it oozed out of our pores, shed from our bodies by tears, in yells and screams – some silent some like the howls of caged animals -, some forcibly ripped from our bodies over toilets seats in the middle of the night. Some disappointments were medicated by prescriptions others in boozy nights as we fought so hard to forget but were every day reminded that this was not a dream.
But that next morning, after we counted ourselves into a new day like one counts sheep to fall into a state of sleep, we all shared one thing: hope. Hope that if this new year was not somehow markedly different, somehow filled with promise and freedom, that it would at least be normal. A normal that existed before this normal. With a consistency that we recognized, not some foreign entity daily made up of fear and lockdowns and ever-climbing body counts.
She looked up from her bed. Eyes fluttering open to welcome in the brightness of a new day. He realized he held his breath, unsure of what this new beginning would hold. Unsure of whether or not it would be filled with goodness and love and light, or it would sting, hurt in different ways and different places all at once like the year before. She took a tentative stretch, looked around, then reached for her phone. Resolved to not immediately jump on to Instagram in the new year, but to try something different. He opened up an informational video on YouTube, one in his ‘To Watch’ list that he had always saved for another day. If 2020 had taught them anything, it was that another day was not promised, that another day may never come.
Some minutes in, the first siren rang. Undisturbed, She continued to watch her video. In the dystopian society that 2020 had become, sirens in the day or at night were not uncommon. On their little street, sirens often rang for a small fire, a faulty fire alarm, a sprained ankle; the fact that a siren, any siren, blared was not cause for concern. To be quite honest, not getting up to investigate as two, then three emergency vehicles blazed by was akin to the feeling of raising a blanket over one’s head when the morning light filters in unwanted as one tries to claim another moment of sleep.
2021 wasn’t supposed to be this. They promised us different, they promised us better, it’s probably nothing, it’s probably something else.
Then the question rang in the house, “why are there so many fire trucks on our street?” And there were. Wishful thinking could no longer mar the fact that something was going on, on this January 1st at 8 in the morning. Promises of better no longer worn as rose-colored glasses in the new year. Our rosy glasses were being ripped off by a swift smack of reality that ricocheted across her face.
The familiar feeling of dread rippled through his body. Firetrucks, an ambulance lined the streets. A moment of deja vu overtook her as just one year before an ambulance had come to take someone away, a fire truck had come to make sure they were safe. Now, once more, the cycle started again. He peaked through the window, now alert to assess the situation. Emergency vehicles haphazardly took up space on their street, a sign of nothing good. He went to grab his coat, a hat, his keys. She threw on socks and her outdoor slippers and shuffled to the back door to make her way out into the new day. Hoping that it just looked worse than it actually was.
He didn’t see anything at first as he cleared the line of houses by his driveway. She just saw the small group of early risers across the street, looking up. Looking at what? Fearfully, he kept going, afraid to go too close, afraid to see, afraid of the reality of what was still unknown, craving the safety of the unknown.
And then she saw it. Black clouds billowing in the baby blue sky. They were angry and vengeful. Like a movie, particles floated up, up, and away from the destructive might of the flames. It was like a thing out of a movie. A campfire on a grander scale. Something ghastly. All she could see was smoke as jets of water assaulted the roof of the burning house. Groups of fire men and women attentive, a fire ladder fully extended.
In the cluster of folk, someone said that everyone had gotten out safely, that no one was hurt or dead. At least that was news as the strangers all looked at someone’s hope, someone’s safe space, someone’s 2021 promise go up in smoke. Like factory smoke, as the fire churned up through the upper levels of the multi-family house, a more tempered gray, then a strong and angry black wafted up from the roof as the cluster watched the fire folk battle the blaze for what felt like an eternity. The haphazard group of strangers stood there, not having anything to do but watch.
On that street, for those who saw, 2021 lost its rosy pink hope, the day hadn’t even fully dawned yet and a truth was known. Different numbers on a calendar didn’t mean anything to fate. Holding onto the magic of different numbers on a calendar was an act of folly.
Bad things didn’t stop happening just because it was a new day, a new year, just because we wanted it to be so.
But, it could be said that when bad things happen to a group of people there’s a shared understanding of grief and in that loss. A sadness that didn’t need to be explained, a dread and fear that could be seen and understood in the look in one’s eyes.
Though she expected there was more shit yet to come in the new year, he also knew that our scars made us human, more grounded in the reality of suffering, more able to empathize, more connected in makeshift communities that are consciously nurtured or instantly formed on a sidewalk, in a new year, at 8 in the morning, with a group of strangers.
Caia Rose 