The Paroxysm

I wonder if before the quiet and desperation for survival, that maybe there was always sound. Sounds that you weren't scared of, ones you didn't have to run from. Maybe it was the sounds of birds, or your noisy neighbor. Perhaps even a dog walker out on the street fighting against the dogs reaching and stretching to the other side of the busy road to another dog. I'd like to think there were swarms of people all going separate places bustling between the buildings that seemed to almost reach the sky, soaring through the clouds.Now, as I sit in a building just like that, although almost 100 years after, peering through a large window I imagine things before the paroxysm.