The brighter-than-daylight flash. The louder-than-thunder sound. The earth-leveling blastwave. The hotter-than-the-sun searing heat. Dust. Rubble. Shattered ruins of high rises. The horrifying shadowed outlines burned into rubble: the last remains of disintegrated human beings. Swirling dust bearing radioactive death. The ever-sickening, whose hair falls out in clumps. The slowly-dying, whose skin pales, then dries out…

“Come watch us turn!” They sing out in wind-carried whispers. Verdant leaves begin shedding their greenery as foliage season arrives. But the two-paragraph analyses my 11th graders wrote won’t grade themselves. The Eagle Scout workbook my candidate completed won’t review itself, either. “Come watch us turn!” The leaves in my former country have surely turned…

Her hands, covered in dirt. Trembling. Hot streams of tears slide off her checks and onto the broken ground. Her chest heaves and heaves, but her sobs remain silent. A crow caws, takes flight from the topmost leafless branch of the dead Pinon. One glance over her shoulder. A gaunt, pale face bearing reddened, resigned…