the panic, twice

It's been, what, a week or so now and it seems distant again-

unless I check the news.

Twice in the span of a few weeks,

looking down to see the words ACTIVE SHOOTER

alive on my phone.

Once was the first thing I saw in the morning,

and I stumbled out of the room mumbling about it in a hushed, incomprehensible tone, doom-scrolled for ten minutes before the picture became clear, and then promptly fell back asleep.

"What were you saying about his school?" he texted later.

"OMG" he replied.

Hoax.  

It had been a hoax phone call.  But the kids had been locked down and dismissed and they parents remained actively rattled.

The panic came back to me in strange ways throughout the day.  

Needing to pause to catch my breath at odd times.  Muscles tightened for no reason.

All that, and I was steps removed and an entire country away.

Imagine.

The second I was attempting to make my first carrot tartare,

carrots cooked and ready to be diced

chives and capers-

(the way I'd been craving capers-

just the thought could elicit a physical response)

and it was all coming together.  

But this time it was not a phone call

and there were real bodies emptied

and no followup outcome article

because the shooter was still at large

and people were hiding in their apartment showers

and new information was not being shared 

but conspiracies were all over screens

and in between dicing carrots I was 

refreshing my phone

and reaching out to a friend who worked at the site.

She was not at work, but home,

grinding egg shells for her worm compost

and exchanging frantic texts with me about

the strange disconnect of this

very domestic moment

in a terrifying world.