The Last Person to Hear Your Voice: Philadelphia’s Urban Sphere and Its Environmental Thresholds

One Morning

One Morning Who was the last person to hear your voice on a cell phone from an airplane over Pennsylvania or from an office in a tower or as you were clambering down a thousand steps on your way to the final seconds of your life? Will the last person to hear your voice please stand. Will the last person to hear your voice please stop screaming, stop remembering that you said I love you and hugs to the children and everything is going to be alright. As the tall buildings open like lilies, bloom and descend, may the last person to hear your voice not remember the passion in your voice as you lied to comfort the last person to hear your voice. The plane flies into the future. The buildings blossom on television. Summer is over. Winter is approaching, and cold rain. Soon the snow will cover everything. Will the last person to hear your voice hear your voice again in the silence as snow falls on the ground where your ashes are mingled with the ashes of others in an erasure that can never be erased? 27 I did not witness the shocked response to your message. I did not wait, slumped against a kitchen wall, for the final click and dial tone when the line went dead and the last person to hear your voice felt death creeping like smoke under the door, along the floorboards, and could not escape. There will be a moment of silence. There will be no excuse, no explanation, no apology. Will the last person to hear your voice please leave the room now to make way for others. 28 ...