Meltdown
       

I won't deny I'm fragile. There's been incidental damage in transit. Who will sign for me? It was raining Cesium-138 the morning I was born. It was in the green apples I ate in the garden. I've secreted away Iodine-131 in my organs. I've listening to the clicking of the dosimeter. I learned how to use a Geiger counter to measure snow as a child. I grew green and fragrant, tumors in my liver and thyroid, blood and bone corrupted, uncontrolled. Like the deer and wolves that escape government detection, like the hot wasps, swallows, and catfish, I will build a home somewhere you'd never expect, ticking away until meltdown. You can house me in concrete, silver, cadmium towers. Like a fairy tale, there are terrors underground, women motionless in coffins, babies wailing without mothers, ready and waiting to inflict judgement, foxfire a dull green flame on the horizon.

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Copyright © 2021 Jeannine Hall Gailey All rights reserved
from Sugar House Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission