Written by a Retired RN who became a landlord

On Valentine's Day we readied to sleep

when I heard the first call at 2200

I looked at you,  you already asleep

but listening as you do and said,

"Who would call at this hour unless there was a fire?"

In a fire prone town this is how you think.

I tucked myself in and began the trip to morning.

The second call at 2220 went to voicemail

which politely dictates messages for me, does yours?

It was Ken, he said "Meg, I think your building is on fire,

I think you better head up there."

Long story short, we were up on the hill

just minutes after my second pant leg slid up,

and I always worked best on graveyards.

The man next to us had escaped the blaze.

It was glorious in its own way, out of control

as the BFD performed what is termed: surround and drown.

Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.

He told us in low whispers that he and his wife 

had lost everything in a California burn a few years back,

lightning does strike twice, just not in the same location.

Nothing is left now. Just a bunch of walls like brothers

broken in a war, scorched and scarred and somehow, sacred.

The whole town grieved. We raged and bargained, 

denial of a fire is impossible, denial of our

animosity towards it however isn't, so we toiled

in a state of bitterness until slowly

but surely, we accepted. We graduated from

the Kübler-Ross academy of hard knocks.

We accepted all the feelings we'd hurt and been hurt by.

We accepted the inconveniences, we learned how to get on.

Until my tenant got cancer. Not another one.

It's a God-damned avalanche. Colons and lungs,

brains and skin, breasts and babies, one after another.

I went in to see him, to check on the overdue rent

that I already knew wouldn't be coming

but I wanted to put eyes on the scene

to gather evidence, we all need evidence

and his wife had been crying, he started crying.

There's just no way, we're tapped out

he said, out of pocket expenses already

have a choke hold, "we'll get it to you as soon as we can."

I said to them, "Isn't it weird how the fire missed us like that?

Only to start over here six months later?"

She looked at him, he looked at her,

as if to say, 'how did she know we were just saying that?'

His wife the real life retired homicide detective

who solved a cold case that made it to 

National TV and who told me

when I asked her "what's it like...murder stuff?"

She said "it's the cruel things people do to other people"

...that's what got her out of the profession.

Same here I thought, same here.