The Wrong Frequency

A siren at 11 PM

that I couldn't match to anything.

Not ambulance, not fire truck, not police.

I stood at the window,

ear pressed to the glass,

trying to place the pitch,

the pattern, the meaning.

The sound kept going.

I kept listening.

There's a specific kind of smallness

in not knowing what's happening

in your own city,

in standing in your kitchen

and hearing something official, urgent,

and having no framework

for what it means.

Maybe a car alarm.

Maybe something from another neighborhood

that carried wrong.

But it sounded official.

The siren stopped.

I waited for it to come back.

It didn't.

Now I'm stuck with it,

with that pitch that didn't match anything,

with the specific anxiety

of having heard something

that was clearly important

and having no way to translate it

into understanding.

I still don't know what it was.

And every time I hear a siren now,

I wait for that wrong pitch,

that unidentifiable sound,

and I wonder what I missed,

what emergency I couldn't

even name.