On our way
we see a group of boys—
Jordan holding his broken guitar,
and Martin, and his brother.
I look at Malia,
but she doesn’t care.
Mrs. Agbayani stops.
Are you boys okay? Can you help us?
They nod,
and we rush to the building.
The glass doors
at the front of our building
are shattered into pieces.
I see her window open,
the basket on the street below it.
We step carefully over the glass,
flashlights beam
through dark hallways,
and the cluster of us
walk stair by stair
slowly, along creaking wood.
Buddy stands at her door
at the end of the hall,
where light fixtures have fallen,
broken onto the carpet.
He barks, sniffs
at the five-inch crack in the door.
I push on the door
but it’s stuck.
Malia pushes next to me,
still stuck.
Mrs. Herskowitz? I call out, nothing.
Malia presses her face against the door.
There’s something blocking it.
Then Martin steps right between us,
with his brother and Jordan.
They pile on the door and push it slowly open.
Buddy leaps in,
darts between fallen
bookcases,
the same one that fell before,
its books spread out everywhere,
and Mrs. Hershkowitz
close to the window,
a broken teacup near her hand.
I kneel by Mrs. Hershkowitz.
Mrs. Agbayani presses a wet rag
against her forehead,
snaps her fingers
in front of her eyes,
and slowly she wakes up.
Buddy licks her face.
The boys move bookcases
out of the way.
Malia and Jordan
stack books against the walls.
Then, like the world getting up,
the sudden whir
of the refrigerator going on,
the static of the TV, the blink and shine of the lights
like we’re waking up from some strange dream.