Monoliths

Smoke of fire swam toward the surface of the sky

like some massive man o' war trapped in

a harbor where it didn’t belong, as

people, not bodies, fell from windows,

not like jellyfish tendrils trailing downward

but like people falling from windows.

After, the radio repeated,

Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning?

so we’d forget the indifferent sunset

as it spilled over our remaining

gray monoliths built atop endless

miles of soil that was once human flesh.

Surely these hours marked the end of history,

as timeless we groped through veils of dust,

but I was thirteen years old. That evening,

I repeated to an empty kitchen,

This isn't a big deal. This'll pass over.

This won’t be a big deal. This'll all pass over,

while picking fallen crumbs off the linoleum floor.

By Jacob Ian DeCoursey