The Sound Moving Away

It woke me from nothing, from the kind of sleep

that doesn't know it's sleeping until something

drags it into sound. The siren. Distant first,

then closer, then so close I got up

and went to the window like I needed

to see where it was, like watching

would make it mean something.

The street below was empty. No lights

except the usual ones, the streetlamps

that never turn off, the glow of the city

doing its night-time thing, the hum

of everything staying alive while most people

are supposed to be dreaming.

The siren moved through the darkness

like it was hunting something. It got louder,

and I pressed my face against the glass

to see if I could see the lights,

if there would be red and blue cutting through

the gray, if the ambulance would pass

right below me and I would know

that whoever was inside was heading

somewhere that mattered, somewhere

that had answers, somewhere that would

take the thing that was wrong and

make it less wrong.

Then it was moving away. The sound

getting smaller, farther, until it was

just a whisper of siren on some other street,

heading toward some other window

where someone else was probably

pressing their face against the glass

wondering if the person inside

would make it, would survive,

would wake up in a hospital bed

and think about the moment

the ambulance picked them up,

the moment everything changed.

I stood there long after the sound

was gone. In the glass, I could see

my own reflection, blurred and half-there,

and behind me, the dark apartment,

and behind that, nothing but the sound

of the siren, still moving away,

still heading somewhere I couldn't follow,

taking someone's emergency

into the night where I couldn't help,

where no one could help except

the people inside the ambulance,

doing their job while the rest of us

stood at our windows and listened

to the sound of someone else's crisis

disappear.