Baby Close Your Eyes

Behind the scrolling lines

Of professional overdub,

Someone is screaming.

The TV is muted

And only the colors catch my eye

As I stand in line

At the Delmar bubble tea,

Like the news would never touch my world

If I couldn't feel it touch me.

And somewhere between the

Coconut milk and bobas there is

Blood, blood, bomb, blood.

No what?

What?

More screaming,

But no sound.

And no words to find.

This time I’m

Watching

From the other side

Of the safety of a touch screen,

Like the digital projection was

Somehow my shield against

The reality

Of these events

That somehow I held in my palm

And pretended I could contain there.

Like maybe this was just a movie

That I could pause and rewind

Or pull up the blanket and cover my eyes

Like that

One day in eleventh grade U.S. History

Where they sat us all down in a darkened

Room to watch the bloodiest scene

In Saving Private Ryan.

And one by one we asked to use the restroom

Just to step outside the gore and breathe.

But this is real history,

Right now.

And right now my phone rings

And I answer like nothing is wrong.

Why the hell is nothing wrong?

No, no,

I’m fine.

I’m still alive.

How are you and what’s-his-name?

No, no, the cute one.

And this,

This is the fiction.

Desperate to pull it off as fact

I’ll reenact my sense of shallow

Invulnerability.

And this can’t be real life.

Because maybe it’s right to feel

That empty sense of twisted gut

And helpless horror

In the pit of my soul.

Rather than watch the big, bad world

From behind the careful crochet of a security blanket

And a voice that says

It’s far, far away.

But the wild, open eyes of a silent screamer

Caught in the bloody LCD

Of the Delmar bubble tea won’t

Stop asking me why.

And I don’t have an answer.