by Robert Scotellaro
I could almost feel my father’s curious disappointment that it never happened. That searing light and disintegrating light he never had a chance to mitigate with his preparations. Those drab green cans of stacked water, rations: his and our salvation that never came to pass. That atomic realization later that anticipated things that do not occur can steer a life with hot hands on the wheel. The atomic blasts which came, were so ordinary: bills, the bottle, the piled up weight of days. Weeds now atop that subterranean vault—a stack of Better Homes and Gardens rotting in a corner, a rusted out transistor radio that never did, but should have, with staticky panic told him/us how wise, how very, very wise he’d been.