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It was a very good wall. It could have stood forever.
That is the first thing you should know. Not that it fell. Not what it cost when it did. The first thing is that it held for five hundred years without being asked, without being thanked, without anyone above it understanding that the reason the floor didn't tilt was because something below had made a choice.
I made the choice. You don't need to know why. The reasons that make sense after five hundred years don't make sense in the moment. In the moment there was just a crack, and no one else, and the particular quality of silence that precedes a collapse in the instant before it becomes a collapse.
I leaned against it. I stayed.
What this book is about is not the falling. What this book is about is the moment I understood that the wall had not been holding anything up. It had been holding everything in.
The crack had been there from the beginning. Not a flaw. Not a mistake. The original architect knew. The crack was the design. The wall was not meant to stand forever. It was meant to stand long enough for the people inside to stop believing they needed it.
They never stopped. So I stayed.
The sentence the city kept not finishing. The open mouth, the raised spoon, the form in the pocket with the signature already dry. These are not tragedies. They are what happens when a system runs without anyone asking whether the system should run. I could have said something. I am saying it now.
Take one step to the left. Look at what was behind you. Look at what the wall was keeping you from seeing.
