It is Safe to Say We Could Both use this Fire Escape.

Magnolia Projects, art work by Bria Williams
“Let your eyelids fall,” she said, closing his eyes with her gentle fingers.
Vivian's hands smelled of faint smoke from their burning home, the stiff soil's stench rose while they had fled in desperate measures
“Can you remember?” she said. “Can you remember before the destruction?”
Jason tried to open his eyes in attempt to see Viv, but she remained calm and covered his eyes.
Could he remember what he was even like before everything was destroyed?   Before Tyler, his son,  had rebelled against him and destruction had come to a city that originally nurtured their family?
Vivian's hand fell limp, but Jason kept it near his face and kissed her fingers. With his attempt to see her once more he was broken up, her thick blond hair caked with dirt that fell off  onto to her cheek. He pushed her hair back with an unsteady hand and gazed out into a sky sliced by misery and the unknown.
“I am the city,” Viv once told him.
Only in the end would she agree to leave with him, but she hadn't decided that soon enough. The protestors and rioters had reached the walls and the city began to burn.
“I am the city.” And he was her, like what we eat we are who we love, but was left in the absence of his wife and son, what was to love?
He kissed her forehead, allowing his salty precipitation to fall upon her cheek, mixing with the clumps of soil , creating a muddy cloud instead of her blush . He closed his eyes but could still see the horror painted across the sky, he closed his eyes because the paint was appearing on his quiet wife.
“I remember,” he whispered, tightening his hand around hers. “I remember what it was like before the destruction.”
He wanted to remember more, but the heat that brought him back only pushed him further into the present
She loved their community, she loved their neighbors and she loved the blue jets that sped through the pool in the skies and the golden arcs that bounced through the reflective ponds and creeks.
He loved her and when she had wept as the guns began to fire and the walls had begun to fall, he had held her and wept with her.
 “I am the city,” she had said, “and this city is me. I was born in the creases of these clouds, I met you where the daffodils turn the meadows yellow,” she had held his cheek to keep him from turning away. “Our child was born in our home near the Sear Field Nursery. The walls, the flowers, the family heard his first cries, heard his first laugh.”
She had closed her eyes and the screams of the dying fogged the visibility of serenity .
“I remember,” he whispered, kissing her cheek. “I remember Tyler.” although it had been years since his death, Jason could still hear his laughter, his tears.
“I am the city,” she once said. And he knew then what she had meant. We are what we love. He had seen her breathing in the scent of daffodils, her eyes closed as the breeze spread the aroma. Smiling then his heart ached from the memory.

He kissed her and squeezed her hand, her fingers cool and loose in his own. He could be with his wife and his son again. All he had to do was to return to the city they had loved.