Firestorm

C.S. Lewis, a soldier in WW I's trenches, captured the desperation of the times: “I am the bomb, the falling death.”* Aerial bombardments roiled massive stone foundations, while children, cocooned in half-lit bunkers, slept fitfully. The ensuing firestorms raged, consuming even noxious air. Breathless survivors surged upward, vaporized by the inferno outside. Tens of millions fled.

At the city's outskirts, my husband, just ten, doused his home's burning roof. We eventually met, married, and raised children with Old World traditions, trimming our yuletide tree incautiously with candles. Years thereafter I recognized the firelight reflected in his eyes as smoldering embers of those long-past firestorms.

*From the poem “Satan Speaks” in Spirits in Bondage; A Cycle of Lyrics