#PrayForNice
I am on the other side of the ocean, where things like that don’t happen
except
on Twitter
I did not turn on the sound,
& I did not hear the screaming the crying the praying the bleeding out the shouts of coaching not to fall asleep the begging too
expecting not to recover within a day,
because I knew my brain was getting
enough of the message through the mute autoplay repeating top-to-bottom down my gaming-grade computer screen my Twitter feed over & over little boxes of the suffering & dying flooded over the PSAs of the Nice police — Have respect for
the dead, the wounded & their families;
refrain from posting videos of the wounded
on social media
a Twitter search of “#PrayForNice” conflates all the “PrayFors”
a search misspells “Nice” as “nice.”
Behind my building, someone has kindly parked a truck the size of a dump truck. I walk all the way around the truck & count the steps around it:
So, that’s how big it is.
Always prepared for things like this, I dig my flashlight out of my purse, crouch, & peek under the bumper:
So, that’s how long it is.
I step around & examine the oily magnet the size of a card table:
So, that’s how heavy it is.
I duck again & peer under the undercarriage, look to the left, then to the right:
So, that’s how bumpy it is.
Twitter still had the party icon next to #BastilleDay when #Nice attack started trending.
Thank you for reading
If this poem brought value to your life, please click the share button
If you would like to help support my poetry, please donate at Paypal.me/VickiSNemeth