I’m wondering if there’s a difference between spring in the mid-atlantic and southeast until I’m leaving. Until I’m leaving and I see a sign in the line for TSA; no guns past this point. It’s absurd until it isn’t. Until it’s petrifying. I’m not past point, stuck like fish in a barrel. I pray out loud. I pray no one can tell how long it’s been since I last prayed.
I think of the saying there’s no atheist in the foxhole and maybe it’s true. Or maybe that would make me a missionary, creating makeshift altars in every grocery store, movie theatre, mall, elementary school, middle school, high school, lecture hall—every foxhole that any god has ever been absent from. I pray that praying will make a difference.
I’m wondering if there’s a difference between spring in the mid-atlantic and southeast until I’m leaving and I see no guns past this point. And I’m trapped. And I know the difference now because it’s eighty degrees and I can’t feel my hands, frozen stiff like it’s still January. So I pray that praying will make a difference. It won’t.
