deja vu

The strangest part about the end of the world was how familiar it all felt. It happens sometimes with disasters: I'll hear the report on the radio and then I will wonder why they are reporting old news. Yes, I understand that the world is on fire. But didn't we already know that?

This time it's worse, though. I walked outside to see smoke rising from Boston's skyline, to see most of the Prudential tower just gone, and it felt like I'd done that before. The smoke was in the same shapes. The train that was derailed just across the street was derailed at the same place it was before. And of course it hadn't been.

I called my lover to make sure everything was okay, and immediately it was like we'd had this conversation before. I hung up the phone, not worried that the world was over, but that I was living out something that I'd already seen happen.