MY SISTER MAGDELENA WAS ENGAGED TO BE MARRIED TO GUISEPPE

my sister magdelana was engaged to be married to guiseppe, who learned a trade at the industrial school on st. marks place, and promised to carry her away from the long days of toil sewing for pennies from her padrone, and the fire started like a whisper, hesitantly, like it was pausing in a corner before it looked into the face of god, then it caught on a waistband, and a moan rose from each floor, and the fire traveled like it was burning through paper, because pounds of fabric burn easily, creating a cauldron of screams and rips and tears, searing through skin like it was made of cotton, like it was flimsy, and one narrow window led to a staircase that fell under the weight of panic, and the elevator cables snapped when someone slid down them, and the firemen's ladder reached only the sixth floor, many died without moving, their skin seared to the bone, and some sat at the window's edge kissing the star of david or crossing themselves and saying a prayer to jesus to save them before jumping to the pavement, and magdelena was caught in the backlash of a curl of fire, closing her mouth with one finger, instructing her to be quiet, to lay down, till she was ashen, till she floated through the charred air of lower broadway, drifting toward the east river, like a black cloud in the late winter sky