Day 409

BRENDAN MCLEOD

You eye the security guards,
the oranged-vested volunteers,
the line for the vaccine
snaking around a sporting complex,
and think: it’s just like a disaster movie.
 
Which is strange because
you don’t live like it’s a disaster movie.
You mostly sit in your house.
 
You step into the overly bright conference room
with the spaced out folding chairs,
take a number like it’s a deli,
and remember most of the death
in disaster movies is off-screen --
bunkered officials watching
satellite footage of razed
post-tsunami capitals.
 
We spend most of our time
with the hero, escaping
calamity upon calamity until
the world’s new again.
 
You wonder, then, if you’re the hero.
Which doesn’t sound right.
This morning you jumped at a spider.
The hero’s the last one standing
and there’s lots here still standing –
 
disaster, you’re sure,
will befall you soon enough.
 
Right before the nice nurse
delivers the jabs you think:
okay, here it is, the moment you’ve been waiting for,
let’s get reaaddddy to rummmmmble, etcetera
 
but you’re not watching the needle,
so when she swaddles the spot
on your shoulder you have to ask:
was that it? and only find out
when she nods. Though at least this
gave you something to do.


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