Eavesdropping

We are the children hiding
in the hallway listening to voices
behind the locked door. Something
big’s going on. We hear a word
now and then when they talk
louder, words like “threat,” “shock,”
“operation,” “going down,”
“torpedo,” “power grids,”
“uranium.” We try to make it all
make sense. We guess. These words
are new to us. Something’s going down.
They’re not telling us. We have
to guess. We huddle on the floor.
We make up stories, what we want
to hear. What scares us the most. 

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