Just a pen in the glovebox

We bombed Iran in recent weeks.

The U.S. I mean—

I heard this news as I contemplated whether or not I’m brave.

Sometimes I feel brave.

And sometimes I just feel like a negative, grouchy, yoga trying, begrudging gratitude journaling, middle-aged, graying beard, green eyed, bald man, watching horrors beyond my control unfold.

They say, “the pen is mightier than the sword.”

I’ve heard that said all my life in fact.

So much so I can’t tell you who that quote is attributed to.

Just a pen.

Like the one floating around in your glove box.

I can’t tell you much about the world before all this, before the bombs, before the boy, before the world spun itself to this space where we now sit. Some of us elsewhere, and me? Just here, on a Monday sushi night in the A.

The pen is mightier.

(deep breath)

Well. Let’s see—

Perhaps they mean it’s like the large green leaves of the oak leaf hydrangeas, reaching across the sidewalks, like the great palms of a giant. Their white cone flowers, crisp and linen in the southern sun.

Maybe they mean the crack of the bat at Truist Park when the ball flies fair and into the outfield. The taste of salty peanuts in a whiskey and syrupy sweet coke, just like my Papa Black drank in the stands, wearing a fishing cap and overalls.

Maybe they mean the sound of “whoo whoo” wafting from some far-off corridor in the back of their house. The coo, an answer to, “Meme, where are you?”

Maybe it’s the heavy bombshell falling tears. The hot ones, heavy on your face. The ones that come when he’s left you (the boy). And you’ve lost, and you’re lost. And here you sit alone, crying, in home that’s now just yours. Sitting with the ghosts of a life that’s now over—

Maybe it’s the taste of muscadine, in the wild of the wood. Daddy’s big hands picking the tiny fruits from a wiry vine growing on a white oak tree—the kind of tree deer like. And because they like them, hunters do too. The tree I want to climb and sit in and yell “Run, Bambi, run!” come October.

Maybe it’s in the leathery smell of Momma’s tattered Louis Vuitton bag that Pop brought her from Paris when he went. Beyond repair, but still seaworthy in the passenger seat of the station wagon driving to soccer practice.

(closes eyes)

Maybe it’s the summer nights, in the yard. Lighting bugs bobbing in the trees. The hoot owl singing like a lone opera singer from a branch far and away. A boy and two girls lying in the grass looking at a black tar sky. A million stars sparkling like diamonds in the pitch. A satellite moving across the world. The cicadas cry and the tree frogs croak. The breeze blows warm air across our faces. And the world is big. And time is slow. And there we were—

one heartbeat, the dishwasher chimes she’s done

two beats

three—

I don’t know if she’s mightier.

The pen.

I think she just bombs elsewhere.

An explosion that moves the unmovable—and topples the untoppleable—and that lights the fuse—

boom.