Attention, Holiday Shoppers
Feb 4 2023
We went about our business.
Window shopping.
Milling about the food court.
Standing on the escalator, eyes on our phones;
and someone in a rush
squeezing rudely by them,
brusquely repeating excuse me's
in an exasperated tone.
A few raised their heads
and looked around,
mildly bewildered.
The rest of us ignored it,
reassured
by the wisdom of the crowd.
Who must have been thinking
a false alarm
or intended for someone else.
And why no public announcement,
where were the people in uniform?
Even after
that first faint smell
of smoke.
But this is the nature of fire,
slow, then fast.
And of panic, as well.
First, inaction,
then all hell breaks loose;
kids, grabbed by the hand,
the elderly trampled,
and everyone else
running this way and that.
More died in the crush
than succumbed to heat and smoke.
Yes, the unthinkable does happen
even here.
Order
is neither preordained
nor immutable.
Without any notice
the social constraints are abandoned
and it's every man for himself.
Which is what the survivor
with a soot-blackened face had to say,
her voice trembling badly
into the microphones shoved her way;
the look in people's eyes,
the shrill shouts
and desperate screams
I will never unhear.
The inner animal,
and civilization's thin veneer.
Inspired by this week's Cautionary Tales podcast; except there, the lesson is learned on a crowded subway platform and in a packed theatre.
https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/cautionary-tales/the-final-illusion-of-the-great-lafayette
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