A hole in the wall

This piece appears in my forthcoming book We Had It Coming.

They slaughtered a score of kids and a mess of their teachers an hour from here. This was all supposed to be happening somewhere else. Somewhere we could fret about it sure but not be made to weep deeply over it. The kind of thing you give an afternoon of attention before forgetting. 

An iceberg melting and collapsing into the water in Antarctica is one thing but now imagine it happened right there off the side of the highway on your commute to work. 

It was an individual shooter not a plural they or a gendered they. But they did it nevertheless. All of them. 

We despaired and so could think of nothing to do but post. To write something beautiful or angry. Both at once. Devastated but not defeated. Not fully defeated. Not even now. To reassert our collective humanity. To remind ourselves that this is all worth it somehow. All of this living.

A shortage of beauty of late as it happens. We've dug the beauty mines clean. The children we sent down into them to burrow haven’t returned. 

It was enough to make you want to get a gun. 

Perhaps it would be better to post something profane. There's no shortage of ugliness to be found in this latest massacre. 

Everyone we knew knew someone who knew someone. 

I punched a hole in the goddamned wall. I’ve never done that. 

Ok once during a football game I was watching.

It wasn’t even that poorly received at home. The punching. How a family would normally look upon a father doing that. I thought briefly my wife might even punch a smaller hole of her own and then the kids too one by one. Each hole smaller than the previous one on down the line as per relative fist size. Having to hold the hand of the youngest to manage it. 

Later after another shooting we could use the holes to measure how much bigger they had grown. Little pencil marks scribbled onto the crumbled plaster. 

I should not have done that. I know that. But then again what should I have done?