By Linda Ankrah-Dove
After the fires in Paradise, California, 2019.
They had no warning and died.
What was it like those last seconds?
Was it bruises, blasts, blows from bricks,
wires whipping, electric shock?
Then nothing?
Or was it take-off, flight into clouds,
dreamlike daring the impossible
until a soaring truck, wheels whirring
in the whirlwind, collided head-on?
Then nothing.
They had no warning. Out of the blue
like a high-speed train, thundering flames
swept away parents and children,
twenty-three people flayed.
Then nothing.
Survivors stagger through hot rubble,
bleeding hands scrabble
at concrete blocks, twisted metal,
upended trucks. All can’t be lost.
But nothing.
A man, legs cross-cut by boulders,
gropes for a trouser pocket, his phone.
He wheezes as fingers fumble
to call his wife. Dead battery.
Then nothing.
A woman in a nightshirt sits on a tree trunk
by a baby-bike, one wheel twisted.
She hugs a mangled silver blender on her lap,
Cuisinart in black letters on its side.
Nothing else.
What is it like to be in the kitchen
getting dinner on a weekday night
and with no warning be stripped
of home and family—
except the Cuisinart?