There haven’t been colors in the sky
like there were that day. He remembers it solemnly.
Red and gray on blue and purple
recalling both beauty and dying flesh
like the world had got the shit beat out of it.

He had cried a bit that morning. No wonder,
with all those bodies on the news like that.
Somebody’s kids weren’t coming home.
Someone else had lost a caregiver.
Nobody was cooking family dinner that night.

Oh, but had it been a Russian bomb!
Had it been a bombardment from China or Taiwan!
It was so much worse, that God had done it.
There was nobody to blame this time around.

I didn’t live so close to the epicenter
so the pictures on the news were only pictures to me.
I went to work that day just the same,
on account of the world was still turning,
and all there was for us, was
one more thing to talk about at lunchtime.