Atlas Minor • 2020 • September

Training

“You’ll be working at least seventeen hours on Election Day,” he said. “So bring a sandwich.”

Tonight’s first presidential debate was a fitting spectacle for a degraded nation.

If I’ve gleaned anything from keeping this glum journal throughout this year, it’s that I keep returning to the language of grief.

It’s my mind that kills me, the constant looking at my watch until I remember how to forget about time.

But tonight there’s light rain, our windows are open to the city’s hum, and there’s something dark and slow on the radio.

We’re leaving the Ohioan wilderness behind, night-driving back to New York.

Standing in a superstore parking lot this evening, I watched some geese fly south, and I remembered my parents’ relationship with birds.

Three moments in America today that reach beyond my ability with words, striking only the rudimentary language of grief.

We’re standing on the verge of an uneasy fall, unsure of just how high the curve will go.

A modern marvel where you can eat fast food on top of eight lanes of freeway traffic.

Last bonfire before we return to the city.

There’s a problem with modern grief, a rupture that cannot be filled with squishy words like mindfulness and acceptance.