Smash The Glasses

We’re gonna have to grow our own food now.

I say it, and they hear me.

Gotta secure our own water.

I nod at them, each one, and they nod back. 

We’re gonna have to work with people who aren’t like us, who don’t think like we do. And we gotta get along with them. Right, because it takes all of us to create safety for each of us. Now, we’re good people, but the necessity to survive may call upon us to do nasty things occasionally.

I fill my wine glass and hold it up to the group. They fill and raise their glasses. We drink slowly, sipping the wine. I breathe through my nostrils and close my eyes.

The necessity to survive is what we’ll tell ourselves for years and brutal years to come. We’re all sober now, despite being chemically drunk on the last of our neighborhood wine. This was supposed to be a celebration. Instead, it became a funeral for the world that passed us by. The one we threw away.

I drain the last of my glass and hold it up to my neighbors who, months ago, were just people I waved to, driving by to get back into my own life inside my own house. And now, they are people I will be trading vegetables with, each growing and killing food to feed us all. So keep us with a bounty of choices inside a world where choosing died in the dark. Didn’t even scream.

I fill and hold up my wine glass again to the group, and they do theirs. Finally, we toast to each other’s health and smash the glasses on our lawn, but they mostly bounce.