photo by me

I’ve lived in large cities. However, I’ve never lived in the middle of the downtown area where I was surrounded by high rises and lived in a high rise myself.

I stayed with friends in D.C. who live downtown on the 10th floor of a building.

As I lounged around in bed one morning, I noticed that the sounds of fire truck sirens were different there than there are in more open places. They don’t have an ebb and flow sound.

It sounded like a wail. It pierced my heart and made me want to cry.

It was the oddest response.

The way it echoes off of the walls of the buildings, bouncing off of corners and cruising down streets, the siren wails out its call.

I thought of the Sirens in Greek myths and wondered if that’s what it was like (okay, is it weird that I think of Sirens while on vacation and associate it with the sirens of a fire truck???).

The Sirens calls were said to be lovely and heart-breaking all at once.

That’s exactly how the fire sirens sounded to me. Lovely and heart-breaking.