It's Still Life

Elementary

I’ve become vaguely dubious about the roller blinds in our classroom.  My teacher pulls the blinds down every Wednesday at noon, just before the air raid siren blares, and I don’t see how curling into a ball under my lift-top desk with my back to the window helps me survive a nuclear bomb. And our teacher shouts, Desk! Shelter! Bomb bomb bomb! And the moment is caught in chalk dust riding on a streamer of pure silver sunlight, and my heartbeat slowly recovers. I’m 10, some are 11, and we’re rehearsing for annihilation. I almost  forgot that I existed back then.  I forgot that I kept myself at arm’s length because my brain overthinks everything. Cuba, Khrushchev and A-bombs, air raids, arrows pointing toward shelters with tinned meats and peaches, and somewhere in my history I hear those words repeated into today, “Shelter.”

Bits of wood and glass
The air burned an orange glow
Flying back to Hell

Written for dVerse Poets. Haibun Monday: Back to School. Photo by Andrew Amistad on Unsplash. There will be some who think this is fiction, or an embellishment. I assure you, it is not. This is a glimpse of what it was like to grow up during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Cold War that followed afterward.  Shared with #APoemADay on Twitter   ©Misky 2021