The Fires

by Sigríður Hagalín Björnsdóttir

he’s a grown man—well over twenty—and he’s got to learn to be responsible for himself.

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the traffic’s unusually slow, but there’s no point getting worked up about the delay, stupid to waste energy on that.

Maybe these people have terrible secrets, maybe their lives are in shambles. Maybe the vaper isn’t allowed to see his kids, maybe the woman on her phone is sending an email to her divorce lawyer. Maybe he’s about to serve a prison sentence for some horrible crime, maybe she’s been diagnosed with terminal cancer. People struggle with the most unbelievable things without anyone being the wiser,

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I’d read up on grief like I would any other illness—I knew it was a project, a process that had to run its course. I tried to believe that with my whole heart and soul, but the sense of loss and loneliness overwhelmed all reason, I felt dizzy at the thought of my bereavement, was seasick with sorrow.

She isn’t a bad person, your mom, he said. She did what she could. But she couldn’t cope with living with us. So it was best for you to stay here with me.

And up above, we unwittingly putter about—we nurse, teach, and write, we build buildings, fry meatballs, brew coffee, plant woods, harness hydropower, and pave roads as if all this scratching at the surface meant anything in the face of the forces that rumble in the depths below us.

Without poetry, we’re just brute beasts on a trembling earth. It’s what makes us human, it gives us a higher purpose. It shows us the beauty that’s in the world and allows us to describe it. I’m not a poet, I don’t know a thing about verse or diction, but I try to think about my photographs as poems.

At the very beginning of Article 2 of the Law in Respect of Marriage from 1993, it says that spouses shall be faithful to each other, support each other, and together guard the interests of their home and family. You’ve broken that clause.

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You go when you want. I’ve never had you, although I’ve wished that I did. I really believe that. But I think I’ve always known you had something like this in you. This selfishness. That you could just up and decide to change your mind, out of the blue, to throw everything away. Somewhere inside me, I’ve always expected it. That’s why I’m so calm.

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You’re not calm, I say. What do you expect? he asks. I’ve been happily married for twenty years, a dependable and loving husband, I thought I was one of the lucky ones who find their soul mates, their best friends, their life partners, who live happily until the end of their days, and then one fine day, I get hit in the face:

Huh yep

Burglaries and looting? Are you for real? Do we have any examples of either happening in emergency situations, outside of American disaster movies?

It’s been my general observation that people receive Civil Protection’s recommendations calmly and with composure.

but intelligence can be stupid and prideful too. It can give a person a false sense of security. Sometimes, it makes you think you have control of things that it simply isn’t possible to control. Sometimes, rationality is just an illusion