A summer Wednesday in August; all the breath in the world vanished as I hunched violet, choking, drinking in everyone’s colors.
All the breath in the world.
It was The Volturi leading all those tourists to their deaths, where they tore their necks open, a blood bath. My favorite person on the planet died bleeding out of their neck.
Trample-able crowds. The whole lot of educators being bussed in at the same time. Spare the ones at my own school, I roll my eyes at most other teachers, people who never grew up and made it everyone else’s problem. Power-poor and phony in their altruism, the kind to post and repost pictures lamenting, “Be kind, everyone you know is fighting some sort of battle,” but would have been the first to send their Jewish neighbors to their deaths for a small nod of approval from a Nazi officer. They speak in vocal-fry tones, (is that misogynistic? is everything?) little squeaks of sound that aren’t their actual cadences by nature. The highest pitch; breaks something kind and patient in you.
Eight thousand people in the county that were here today, someone estimated, and it was one of the math or science teachers, so it was probably pretty accurate. Eight thousand people in one building at the same time. It would be physically impossible for all of them to be good people. In the past two weeks alone, two had been arrested, two! among them, for pedophilia. Eight thousand seemingly innocuous childhoods. Eight thousand people paid in dirt, seashells, and monopoly money. Eight thousand reasons to be disgruntled with a handgun.
“What do you mean they don’t sell alcohol at this hour!” One of my fellow clown-martyrs joked, insufferable.
Ha ha ha, we’re all drunks! Ha ha ha, alcoholism! How off the wall are we for making a joke referencing a l c o h o l at a work event, someone get SNL on the phone!
Bitter and grounded and good, but then it all got so loud, so fast. So inescapably loud and tilting and difficult to breathe. I’m telling you, the air was gone. Oxygen level: Zero. And it was all so simple, really. There wasn’t air because it wasn’t real. “I’m in a video game,” I thought, “crash the car to start again.” But the character isn’t in a car, can’t navigate past all the shrill-shrieky NPC’s to get in one downstairs. Instead there is a ledge, a beautiful ledge, steel bars, navy blue like courage, the promise of oxygen, breath, life, at the bottom. Palm on the top of it. Run and fling. Run and fling yourself off of it and you can start the game again. You won’t be stuck on this level anymore.
“Run. Hide. Fight,” They tell you, before classroom management or how to write an engaging lesson plan or before you pick your health insurance or anything else. Press your centigix badge ten times and JSO will come, a genie in a bottle.
My eyes found the coworkers I’d grieve if they were shot dead – one, two, three, four, five. Not enough to fit on one hand if I included myself. Not enough to statistically all make it out alive, well…maybe? Out of eight thousand, maybe, but if the shooter was in close range, no, unlikely all six would live or pass unscathed.
My gaze went from the water fountains, (2 of them) the concession stand, the wall by the bathroom, the stairs.
Laughing and laughing, miserable, indifferent, tired.
The water fountains, the concession stand, the wall by the bathroom, the stairs.
The exit doors blinking like how movies depict night clubs in darkness high off MDMA.
The water fountains.
The concession stand.
The wall by the bathroom.
The stairs.
“I’m so glad they didn’t check our purses,” I had heard our Social Studies teacher say to someone else, going up the escalator ride.
They didn’t check purses.
They had a metal detector, but did every single soul under this same roof go through one? Walk in between the grey barriers? “I’m not subjecting myself to the radiation,” I could pick twenty people in sight that would be the type to protest to that. The workers did not look like they were paid enough to care. And there were so many doors. So many possibilities of getting inside. Maybe not everyone came in through the front door. Maybe a Vystar Arena worker decided they had enough, they hated school, and fuck the teachers that tormented them, today was the day.
We weren’t close enough together. We wouldn’t ALL not get trampled. ALL not get shot.
My back couldn’t find a wall.
The water fountains.
The concession stand.
The wall by the-
Where did Caitlin go?
Little bumble bee swarms around me. Everyone indifferent as we’re all about to die. Air didn’t exist, it never had.
It never had It never had It never had
Doom, Gloom, Prune, Tune!
The first night in June.
Colors, everywhere. Three dimensional ones that didn’t exist, no. Leaking down from the walls.
Jumped over the moon!
Oh! leaving so soon?!
My ears were ringing so loudly, I pressed them shut like a child would, wincing. Something important was leaving my body. Blood? Sense? Cents.
One sentence, one spoon.
One, two, was past-noon
Try to find the air in the room. Of course there’s air in the room, come on. Air? You think a concert venue in Jacksonville, Florida is going to be the first place on the planet to run out of air?
But no-
Too many people talking, moving, too many different colored groups of matching t-shirts for air. We are not safe. We are not real. We are not going to make it.
Hearty violence ensued!
Run back to your rooms!
Faster than smooth!
Whack! Said the Ruse.
Passively fused.
A massive, big dude.
Rancid and rude.
Apples and food.
No air No air No air but it did exist,
I knew it existed. It was just so hot. So loud.
Bad attitude, called her a prude.
No air. So hot. Too loud.
–
“What happened to you?” One of the ESE teachers asked innocently later, when we were all back at school.
I laugh, shaking my head, like how I do when I talk about one of the kids doing something stupid.
“I had a thing. It was, like, it was so dumb.” I scrunch my nose.
They laugh in the patient and polite way that prompts me to say more if I want to but does not demand it. I shrug.
“Crowds, you know? This country. We’re teachers.”
–
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