When the End Starts

all of us are shopping.
Our lists are made out carefully.
Don’t forget anything a voice calls out.
Remember what I asked you for.
Do I know her.
She is oddly far away.
Slowly we cross each thing out. The finished list is our masterpiece.
There must be nothing left on it—
this blueprint meant to repair—or is it outsmart—
the horror.
Whose cart is this?
I realize I’m sweating.
It feels like the moon has been full for years.
It won’t go back down.
All the tree crowns have been razed to stop the spread of
the disease,
though the forests of trunks and hacked limbs remain. On good nights
they gleam. Their shadows rake
the empty lots.
Are you almost done I hear myself say,
but when I throw my words onto the scales
nothing moves.
These days the words become real
only for the speaker—the air whispers to me—the listener is stealing away,
back to its dark habitat, where all is
unsayable. Unforgettable I try to add. Un-
fathomable?
I swear there was a white rabbit, it was childhood, I saw it whizz by.
You didn’t need your picture ID. You just showed up.
You were a neighbor, a customer. You had a say
in things.
Then the lists started—didn’t they?—someone started to keep
track. Of what. Of the façade. Of the cracking façade of the
here-to-stay. Of your imminent replacement. Of your market-based
behavior, of whoever wanted to return
to nature. Of
what to buy, what to fear.
Then someone who raised a flag up their new pole
said they needed the flag
in order to feel the wind.
Then the day for triaging the-imperfect-among-us came.
Everyone was walked out to the field. They were surrounded. No one cld look
away.
Eventually the quiet returned.
Later the soldiers lounged in the churches
careful not to slip.
They pocketed the relics. It was allowed. They burned
the silver icons down
to tiny pools. I can still see them. They weighed it all. How much
did they get, how
much—that was the question, that remains the question. The day
is still perfection out there. But are u feeling the new chill
now. Will you not say what you
think? Will you keep looking the other way, the other day, the other day I was
so vehement, the other day I was not alive for a while—I was a
bystander—I hear the clacking of its worn-out wheels as I push my heavy
shopping cart, card in hand, ready for
checkout. Once I watch them drag
the whole cuffed family
out. I feel for my
device. I feel the chill again. The frightening away of
existence. For a while after,
I seek cover. Massacres
happen during
express checkout. The hospital is gone by the time
my remote clicks the car door
on. I bend to pack into the trunk. When I stand back up
the young journalist is
gone, the student’s gone, the mother is, her children—all—all of them
gone.
Where are her arms.
Where are their legs.
The wind kicks up in the parking lot. I watch
discarded cans get carried along
awhile.
Self-preservation,
you are measuring my minutes out, you are weighing my
dust. Last night
a wolf walked through my yard, he skirted the fence.
It was late. He was starved.
The streetlamp showed me just how much.
I watched his bones articulate his gait
into the blazing pool
of light. My bags are still on the countertop. It’s dark in here. The snow
begins again. No wind. I can hear it hum, the ice maker,
I will wait for it to drop its incandescent offerings
into the icy tray
made to receive them. Soon
one will arrive
in it.
Anytime.
Now.