Terry Ehret

All of Us Must Have Been Asleep

When it happened, some of us were planting in the garden or spreading manure and digging the pungent soil into beds. Some of us were looking into the eyes of the beloved, or into reflections of self we mistook for the beloved. Some of us were finding it hard to breathe. Some of us were trying to keep the house clean, making plans or canceling them. When it happened, some of us left the television sets and the news of bombs hammering against the night and sat down in chairs and tried to explain to ourselves what it was about. Some of us couldn’t bear to come out at all, but stood alone in the spring evening and stroked—softly, softly—our fear. All of us must have been asleep to have let so many lies slip by like the hundreds of days between now and then, slip by like this silence we have not yet learned how to break.

On the anniversary of the bombing of Baghdad, March 19, 2004