Evan Vandermeer

Blessed

In 2001, Fyodor Ushakov was designated the patron saint of nuclear-armed long-distance bombers. I doubt he would approve, but who knows—if anything needs looking after from above, bombs capable of blowing up the planet do come to mind, as they sometimes do in my dreams, where they go off in the distance and send mushroom clouds high into the stratosphere. Just yesterday, I came across an instructional video on what to do if a city near you gets nuked, and it said, in short, that if you’re outside the initial fireball’s blast radius, you have at most eight seconds to protect yourself from the subsequent shockwave, which along with the lingering fallout is the real killer, and which will almost certainly turn you inside out if you don’t—in those first few precious seconds—lie face down, cover your ears and eyes, and breathe through your teeth until the shockwave (hopefully) passes over your prostrate body. Surviving this, you must then flee underground or into some steel- or concrete-enclosed space and hide for two whole days, until the radiation outside has subsided to levels less than definitely lethal, and only then can you resurface, and begin the hunt for your surviving loved ones, hoping they too knew what to do.

dizzy dawn
for the first time holding
my firstborn

---

About the Author

Evan Vandermeer lives outside Nashville, Tennessee, with his wife and daughter. He received his MA in English with a concentration in creative writing from Indiana University South Bend. His haiku and haibun have appeared in Acorn, cho, Frogpond, Modern Haiku, and The Heron’s Nest, among other journals. His haibun “Pippin” was awarded third place in the 2022 HSA Haibun Contest.

---