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.
