NAPOWRIMO #27

Read Write Poem NaPoWriMo Prompt #27 - Let Someone Else Take the Lead

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UNTITLED (ACROSTIC)

Nonsense, I said to her, as her eyes darted about, terror-filled. You must have misheard what they said. There is no way that two planes crashed into the World Trade Center. She began to weep, assuring me that it was true.

I was paralyzed for nearly seven years, a holy number.

Nuclear war was the great fear that held me hostage in my youth. It now seemed possible that nuclear terrorism was just a matter of time, of patience. I waited.

Errors abound.

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Eventually, the world shifts again, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, but the shift cannot be denied.

Loss cannot be defined.

Even though we try to find distractions to get us through our day-to-day lives, we find it hard to live. The loss is heavy. We knew someone who knew someone who knew someone. We play six degrees of separation. In some sense, we were there, vicariously.

Viewed from ground level, viewed from above, viewed from nearby skyscrapers—the devastation was still the same, whatever the angle, whatever the zoom.

Everyone wondered if the skies would ever be this quiet and empty and eggshell blue again—even the birds were quiet and still.

Night falls and sleep comes. Welcome it.

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The acrostic is formed by the first letter of each "paragraph." The shift of tense and person throughout is deliberate. (The jury is still out on whether or not it works, but at least they are aware that it was premeditated.)