With the Japanese government urging people to get outside of a 19-mile radius of the factory to leave their homes, what happens to the people who have nothing to lose? Unlike apocalyptic scenarios, death is not imminent. But effects from the radiation might show up in your children or your children’s children, in those that eat food from the land and drink water from the local source. So they stay. The loners, the misfits, the shut-ins, the agoraphobics, the sick, the infirm, the near death, the sad, the hopeless. They stay because they have nothing to lose. And suddenly the town goes from pre-event to post-event to stuttering. A staccato instead of a steady pulse, arrhythmic yards and houses where children used to play and mothers used to congregate by the playground to watch them.

There is nothing to see. Nothing feels different, yet the possibility of contamination strikes at our deepest urges and freedoms and yells at us to “Go! Go! Go!” to preserve our selves and our families from something that may or may not happen, an invisible menace of human design.

So they stock up from the shops, or raid their cabinets, or loot from their neighbors (kindly, as culture suggests) or just waste away giving up to the forces of nature and disaster. So much is swept away from the water that rushed in and swallowed so many, unrelenting as the hungry sea dined on our townspeople, bicycles, trash receptacles, cars, shoes left out to dry. It rushed in without warning, bold and brash and deafening, perfect sky and then whoosh, we’re floating. Everything’s floating. Everything’s floating and swirling and gnashing and clashing. I see it on television. I see it in my memories. I think of all those lost cousins, mothers, daughters, uncles, grandparents, loved ones. Who looked up to see a wall of water even the most reckless of surfers would avoid.

And then, it was gone. The water slipping away with our town in it. Dragging back loot to the sea like some kind of sick booty, old tires, newly planted seedlings, sinks, clothes, doors, whatever it could loosen when it came uninvited. The water seeps between the cracks in the sidewalks wrinkled from the earthquake, it makes puddles where there were once trees, it rinses the dirt from a thousand windows that people kept forgetting to clean. Finally shiny with no one to look out of them.

So I sit. And it’s quiet. I’m waiting for death. I’m lying here. Waiting. As the nuclear plant crumbles and my kettle boils and I think of Hiroshima. Those broken memories of Hiroshima, with all the noise the crying and the aftermath, this tsunami, after the earth cracked open, swept everyone away bringing so much quiet, quiet, quiet. There is no one to pick through the rubble yet, they are all rescuing those in towns less affected, I can see it on the news.

A dog howls and I look outside to see a scruffy mutt limping and soaked, emitting yips for an owner who is no longer here. It slowly makes its way down the alley behind my house, I watch as it slowly takes each step determined to get “home,” yet on a fruitless journey.

My building is the only one left amidst the rubble; I am here in my tower, alone. Everyone else was at work when the tsunami hit, working on the sea or at the docks, I am used to being here alone in the daytime. I am used to the quiet. It’s better than the roar and the rawness of Hiroshima where people were burning and charred and our world got blown to bits into the sky. Now instead of flying we all were swept into the sea.

I have nowhere to go, no one to see, no place of respite. Only this house with my memories and my dusty old trinkets. As nothing happens and I’m still breathing, I get up to make tea. As the water stops its boil, it’s even quieter. Nothing. They are all gone.

I take out a bag of tea from the cupboard, pick out my favorite mug, and pour the steaming hot water it. Steaming water so unlike the cool blue water that ran through the streets. I look out the window waiting for my tea to steep. The sun is shining as if welcoming the day; I turn my face to greet it. With the bright sun I can still see red with my eyes closed, held tilted towards the warmth.

I open the window and smell the fresh air of the sea and stand there taking in the sea and the sun, waiting for my tea to steep. One minute, two minutes, three minutes. It’s so quiet. I lower my gaze and close the window, spotting a child’s tricycle upturned on the pavement. As if its owner had just trotted inside for some water or a snack, it waits to be mastered again. It’s glistening with beads of the sea and a bit of kelp that washed in with the tide. It looks out of place, even amidst all this disaster and death and destruction.

I want to tilt it back up right again and remove the kelp. I want to make things right again.

But instead, I pick up my tea and turn around and walk back to the bedroom. I take a sip of tea before I place my mug carefully on the table next to me so it won’t tip over. It’s resting on top of a book about cheetahs and next to my alarm clock which keeps blinking a red 12:00 over and over again throwing a strange hue of pink onto my mug.

I lie down. I place my head on the pillow, take off my slippers and arrange them carefully by my bed. I rest my arms on my stomach and watch them rise and fall as I breathe. It’s so quiet I can hear my breath. I wonder if Iniko the tailor made it, or if Hichiro the farmer’s crops have all turned to mud, if the temple in the city centre is still standing tall or if its tilted into the earth. And I wait. I am ready.