This is Not a Drill

The emergency alert, which was sent to cellphones statewide just before 8:10 a.m., said: "BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL." A revised alert informing of the "false alarm" didn't reach cellphones until 38 minutes later. 
- CBC, January 2018 

Yesterday we listened 
to Hawaiians describe 
the thirty-eight minutes before 

they thought a ballistic missile 
would drop. First, the realization: 
no shelter, no basements 

on an island. Then the families 
just waiting together on the bottom floor
of their living rooms.

This morning he tells me 
he can no longer feel
excitement. The once erratic 

trigger finally defused  
by his mood stabilizer:
a ceiling 

ceaselessly above, he says. 
Now the side-effect
of a blessed floor.

Like after too much coffee. 
The unsteady swell 
in the belly, tapering. 

Or like a wave always 
about to crest. To spiral
into what is mercifully 

gone. Then I remember 
the mother in Honolulu 
carrying her children 

downstairs—doing what she could 
with the minutes 
they thought they had—

and I take his hand, 
hearing her frenzied 
footsteps in my head: 

that surge, then its absence, 
what must mean
a kind of acceptance.