Day 432

There is a city beneath this city.
The street workers sweep the debris,
pile it against the rubble.  Under the rubble,
those who lived here live out the lives they knew:
the ones who sat talking for hours in cafés,
the ones who taught school, the old ones
who sorted through memories, the children
who chased each other up and down staircases.
In the unseeable city beneath these ruins,
people hurry to work, stopping to greet a neighbor;
a doctor holds her stethoscope to a boy’s chest,
listens closely to his breathing;
the smells of cooking, the sound of lids
placed on pots, voices responding
to voices whose words
can’t be made out.  In the ghost city
under the rubble, a writer
sits at a desk and writes. Here we are,
we who have lost everything appears
clearly on the page.  And still
we are telling the story.