by Hallie Dolin
Last Tuesday the pointer moved one second closer
to destruction. It's eighty-nine seconds to midnight.
Around the world, our weapons wait for our command:
all vigilant, sitting patiently through midnight.
We hear reports of ever-growing plagues passed on,
although information blackout's our new midnight.
No one draws wheat from chaff, facts from alternative,
or musters effort like we used to do. Midnight
and its stifling, sleepless depths—no rest for us—
is a bruise seeping blood, this black and blue midnight.
We snipe over who deserves to rain their revenge
on whom, whose forfeit lives should dim out to midnight,
but we've missed the point. Your fate is mine, my blood is
your bloodstain. It's eighty-nine seconds to midnight.
Hallie Dolin is a pathology resident in Cleveland, Ohio and has been writing for fun for nearly three decades. Her work has previously been published in The Case Reserve Review and the now-defunct Flashes in the Dark. When she isn't trying to discover novel cures for frightening microbes, she spends her time working on an actual novel. She also enjoys knitting, playing the guitar, and spending time with her cat.
