4:52
tenth floor and roof
tenth floor and roof
Blinded
by smoke and tears
an Italian
prayer on her lips,
she
stumbles, catching her shin
on the
Green Street stairs.
A rough
hand grabs her arm
hauls her
to her feet.
"Tessie,
move!" her rescuer says,
or she
thinks he says, his words
are
nothing like her Papa's.
He leads
her and others up
not down,
to a rooftop
where the
sky breaks through grey air,
blue
stained with smoke.
At last
she can breathe
she looks
at the faces of the others,
searching
and not finding.
The
next-door building's roof
is too
far above this one
and
Tessie wonders if
they have
come here to die.
Then someone
lowers a ladder
over the
side.
Her
burned hands throb as she climbs.
They all
flood into this building, a school,
with flame
free stairwells,
but it is not
until NYU students,
jabbering
in English,
have led
her to the streets
full of
watchers pale with horror
that she
realizes.
She asks,
haltingly,
"Where
is Vincenzia? Please,
she was
on the ninth floor."
No one
answers
as
another body,
shirtwaist
gleaming in the sun,
falls.
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