Life Choices

the father sees a neighbor screaming with child as she runs out the front door to shelter he hustles his own to shelter and turns to see other neighbors with their two dogs come running behind the shelter's too small to hold everyone, the father says climb in but we can't fit the dogs the neighbors hesitate - then pull the dogs back to their house as father shuts shelter door in a few seconds jets and trains and bombs overhead shiver into steel and time stops or stretches to infinity as flotsam shoots through cracks father opens shelter door sure he will witness haunting fears he knows and runs to the pile that was minutes ago, the neighbors house throwing pieces of piles aside he digs to the small space that two hundred and ten miles per hour had enclosed to free friends and dogs both men shudder at their fortunes the father, immensely glad to not have to bear witness and grief, the owner, who couldn't do that to his beloved dogs © Goode Guy 2013-12-26 http://www.npr.org/2013/12/26/257255801/after-moores-f5-tornado-storm-shelter-interest-increases