house_fire kerry when i see an ambulance i still think of jack and how he decided to go to school to be a paramedic, would come home late at night and tell me about the ride-alongs, and it wasn’t the uniform but the courage that made me want him again but it was too late to salvage us then anyway. i hear sirens here more than i did in oregon, probably because there’s so many people. at every moment someone is dying being born reconsidering doubting having sex making love (they are not the same thing) last night when i was walking lou a fire truck roared by and the horn was brutal like some giant animal being tortured. i could hear sirens beyond it, and i was sure there must be a house on fire. the houses here are attached, rowhouses mainly, so mice and fire spread quickly. house fires remind me of nick. nearly fifteen years ago, before i knew him, his family’s house burned down. i asked alex how it started and he said quietly without looking up from his book that he didn’t remember and i got the feeling the memory still stings a little even for him but how the fire started isn’t the real story, not all that important anymore or maybe ever he told me how nick’s older brother tom’s funeral was one of the most surreal few hours how everyone was crying everyone and besides the fact that it was tom, alex said, it was the first time someone died so close to their age, tom must have been 23 or 24 and such a violent death witnessing so much grief was the worst part, all the shattered younguns mourning together. the entire family escaped, mom and dad and nick and their little sister and tom too, but tom went one way, alone, and everyone else another, to opposite sides of the house he thought they were still inside he went back in and never came out it makes me teary to write it even though i didn’t know him. maybe part of it is how nick admires him still misses him always will even though that seems so obvious. or maybe part of it is just the idea of someone who can love so fiercely and deeply they would climb back into a burning house to save you. on tom’s birthday nick always posts scanned pictures of him online. there’s one i find particularly charming: tom is standing on top of a boulder like he’s conquered it, shirtless, posing and flexing, laughing, with the blue ridge mountains a background behind him. i’m sure whoever took the picture was laughing too. they say he was a real ham ripped, a goofy muscle man same fiery orange hair as nick i wonder what it’s like to know your brother died for you, needlessly—i hope i never find out sometimes when he has lou sleeping like the dead in his lap, a rare quiet moment, nick looks so far away it all happened years ago but i want to curl up under his arm and be close to a man i’m not attracted to but care for and feel safe with there are not many men who wouldn’t frighten or bewilder me if they opened their arms lifted me up and said oh how i missed you but time doesn’t matter, let’s just be here now, goddamn i love ya there is nothing else behind it; what you see is what you get. i like to imagine tom made people feel safe if i had known tom like alex did maybe i would see him in nick. i’m sure he’s there. 211016 ... tender_square kerry, this piece is powerful and moving (so much of what you write is!). i'm grateful to be reading your posts and to bear witness to your writing prowess. thank you for all you give here. 211017 ... kerry thanks, tenderquare. i still keep thinking about how good it feels to be back on red. i love the scenes you create in your writing—i feel like i’m coming to know the people in your life. 211017 ... kerry tender_square, that is. my fingers and brain aren’t getting along lately! 211017 ... tender_square i feel the same way about all the folks you're writing about. 211017 ... kerry a couple weeks ago, on my mom's birthday, there was a huge fire in philadelphia, it started in the morning, before sunrise, that quiet time when so many people are just beginning to wake up. it was one of those narrow, three story row homes, pretty close by where paloma lives. it was divided into two apartments--one was the ground floor, the two upper stories made up the second--and the family upstairs had lived there for about a decade. all the smoke detectors were working but had been disabled. (i've been fined for disabling mine after burning tofu and cookies. i winced at this detail.) a little boy abut five years old, one of the two who survived, said he'd caught the christmas tree on fire. why was he awake so early, was he alone, how? a man who lived in that apartment jumped from a third floor window. (it turns out fire escapes aren't required in philadelphia.) the man was badly injured, but lived. i don't know what else you'd do, if the window was your only choice. eight children and two mothers died. all these people living in one apartment. fourteen people spending the holidays together, being a family in some kind of way. when i read about the house fire i was riding around strawberry_mansion seeing all this poverty and misery and thinking about the people i'd known who lived there, how i didn't know what it looked like when i knew them. i went into the house feeling like i'd run five miles, exhausted by what i'd seen and what i'd read on my phone. i used to idly daydream about living in one of those towering three story houses. roughly one room on each floor, a narrow staircase running straight up like a spine. they seemed like toy houses. i've always liked living in strange or quirky places. now when i walk around and look at them i shudder. they look like death traps. i can't help seeing figures leaping from the windows. after a few days i'd become so nervous i bought another fire extinguisher, have ordered one of those emergency ladders you can only use once. i sort of feel crazy but after all the stories i've heard--can you blame me? 220116 what's it to you? who go blather from