I never thought there would come a day when I would sit here, talking to a photograph.
The news says 37 people died in the explosion.
But the news will never tell you who the thirty-seventh person was.
What his name was.
How old he was.
Whether he had children.
Whether he also walked out the door that morning saying:
“Go to sleep early tonight. Don’t wait for me.”
The thing I regret most now is that I didn’t stop him that morning.
He was moving slowly while getting dressed, and I remember getting annoyed at him.
He said the factory had been rushing orders lately, that he might have to work overtime again.
I snapped at him:
“Overtime, overtime, every single day. When is that damned factory ever going to end?”
He didn’t argue back.
He just lowered his head, finished the last bite of noodles, grabbed his jacket, and left.
I had no idea that would be the last time I would ever see him alive.
Around noon, I heard the explosion.
Not like fireworks.
Not like the sounds we grew up hearing every New Year.
This sound was different.
It was the kind of sound that empties your brain in an instant.
The windows shook.
The floor trembled.
And my first thought was:
It’s over.
Because he was inside that factory.
I called him immediately.
No answer.
I kept calling.
Still nothing.
Then I started running toward the factory.
The roads were full of people.
Some people lost their shoes while running and didn’t even stop to pick them up.
Some were crying while running.
Fire trucks, ambulances, police cars — everything was blocked together near the entrance.
And the smell.
I still cannot forget that smell.
Burned metal.
Gunpowder.
Smoke.
And something else underneath it that I still cannot describe.
Something that did not smell like fireworks anymore.
When I tried to go inside, someone stopped me.
So I stood outside and waited.
And waited.
I remember the sun was unbearably bright that day.
But my whole body felt cold.
Later, the hospitals started registering names.
Some people were burned beyond recognition.
Some people were still missing.
Some were alive when they arrived at the hospital, and dead an hour later.
The hallways were filled with screams.
Not movie screams.
Real screams.
The kind that sound like a person’s soul breaking apart.
And even then, I kept lying to myself.
I kept believing he would survive.
Because he had survived everything else in life.
When he was younger, a machine crushed his hand while he was working out of town.
Later, his back started failing.
Then stomach problems.
Some nights he would curl up in pain, sweating through his clothes.
But the next morning he still went to work.
Every single time.
Whenever I asked him why he kept pushing himself like this, he always said the same thing:
“What choice do I have?”
Yes.
What choice did he have?
People online ask questions like:
“If the job was dangerous, why didn’t he quit?”
Whenever I read things like that, I almost laugh.
Because only people who have never truly been poor can ask questions like that.
Do people think we didn’t know it was dangerous?
Of course we knew.
The factory was like an oven in summer.
The air always smelled of chemicals and gunpowder.
The electrical wiring was old.
Boxes were piled everywhere.
Everyone working there carried fear in the back of their minds.
But fear does not pay rent.
Fear does not buy medicine for aging parents.
Fear does not pay tuition for children.
Fear does not keep a family alive.
He was already in his forties.
No education.
No connections.
No special skills.
Who was going to hire him somewhere else?
So he stayed.
And little by little, he traded his life away for a paycheck.
Later I learned that people had inspected the factory before.
There had been warnings.
There had been fines.
There had been “corrections.”
And yet production continued.
Overtime continued.
Orders continued.
The factory kept operating exactly the same way.
That is the part I cannot forgive.
Because it makes me feel like many people never truly cared whether workers lived or died.
What mattered was keeping production moving.
Keeping orders on schedule.
Keeping money flowing.
After my husband died, people came to our home.
They said they would “handle the situation.”
They said there would be compensation.
They said they hoped the families could understand.
Understand what?
Can money bring him back?
My son still asks every night before bed:
“When is Dad coming home?”
I cannot answer him.
A few days ago he even sent his father a voice message.
He said he got sick at school.
He said he missed him.
He said he wanted him to come home soon.
But nobody will ever reply again.
Sometimes I still wake up in the middle of the night listening for footsteps outside the door.
Because my husband used to come home late from work.
And he always opened the door quietly, very quietly, so he would not wake our child.
But now the apartment stays silent.
Completely silent.
And the worst part is not only that he died.
The worst part is how quickly the world moves on afterward.
The news talks about it for a few days.
People argue online for a few days.
Then everyone continues living.
Fireworks will still explode in the sky.
Factories will reopen.
Orders will continue.
As if these people died for nothing.
But for families like ours, life does not continue normally.
The house feels hollow now.
There is an empty chair at the dinner table.
His clothes are still hanging where he left them.
His toothbrush is still in the bathroom.
There are still cans of beer he bought sitting in the refrigerator.
I cannot bring myself to touch them.
Because some part of me still feels like he is only working late.
But deep down, I know the truth.
He is never coming home again.
The government says 37 people died.
But to us, it is not “37.”
It is 37 destroyed families.
37 homes that will never feel whole again.
I used to believe that if people worked hard enough, endured enough suffering, life would slowly become better one day.
I do not believe that anymore.
Because some people never even get the chance to survive long enough to reach that “one day.”
And maybe that is the cruelest part of all.
Not the explosion itself.
But the feeling that the lives of people like him were always considered replaceable long before the fire ever started.
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