Relief With Guilt Attached

The siren started at 6 AM

and I felt my body relax before my mind

could catch up.

It wasn't coming toward me.

I could tell by the pitch—

it was already fading,

already someone else's emergency,

already moving away

into a neighborhood I don't live in,

toward a person I don't know,

toward a crisis that belonged to them,

not me.

And I felt grateful.

The sound got smaller,

became almost a whimper,

a faint wailing in the distance

that I could pretend wasn't real,

wasn't urgent,

wasn't a person gasping

or bleeding

or deciding

whether this was the day they'd run out of time.

I drank my coffee.

The siren got smaller.

I felt relief bloom in my chest

like something I should be ashamed of.

Somewhere across the city,

someone's alarm was going off.

Someone's phone was ringing.

Someone was already driving too fast.

But it wasn't me.

And the guilt I feel for that relief

is smaller than the relief itself,

which is maybe the most honest thing

about how we survive—

we're glad it's not ours,

and we drink our coffee anyway,

and we don't think too hard about

the people who didn't get to pass through,

who couldn't turn left

and pretend they didn't hear it.