Banshees

Halloween week

Monday night

I sit at my desk above the city

Terrified

9/2020 - Fineliner pen 

I hear a loud rat-a-tat-tat

Over and over again

I look out on the expressway

Site of many drivebys

Are automatic weapons back in vogue

80 years after Dillinger?

I see nothing, but hear wailing

Odd sirens

Banshees crying for dead and dying

I realize in moments

The rattling is the Plexiglas skin

Of our blue building

Rattling against the bones

And the wailing is the autumn wind 

I thank God again

I don’t work in a high rise

Like my cousins in Chicago

Routinely swaying a foot to each side.

Every time I hear that, I think

Stress fractures, stress fractures

The erosion of years

And I picture the building swaying

Then snapping

How many floors down could the building break

With the lower half remaining safe?

What would be the sound of

The top of the building breaking loose and falling? 

How long would it take?

Would it break clean,

Or tear off building flesh

On the way down?

Like a ragged wound

Bleeding people?

(10/21/19)