My fingers never touched it,
save for the tv screen.
Mama told me to not touch the screen with my unclean hands.
Sometimes when she wasn’t looking, I did anyway,
and felt crackling beneath my fingertips,
miniature lighting storms,
ravaging the faces of the young, famous, and beautiful.

but i never touched the undesirables,
never laid holy lightning on the exposed war-bones
escaping at 90 degrees from charred, living corpses.

i never held the dying children,
coffee-cup weight in my palms,
colder still,
and forgotten after the end of the episode.

and i still felt nothing
when i should have smelled ash.

i can’t imagine, or i can,
what happens on our interior planets,
during the four seconds before impact.
are they blissfuly going about routines?
are the markets full, only a few dissenters
crying “end is nigh” ?

they won’t even feel it.