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CHARLES HARPER WEBB Reading about Rwanda What if no morning newspaper flopped down beside the Welcome in front of my door? What if my oatmeal box were empty; my orange juice pitcher, dry? What if my solid brass faucets no longer flowed? What if I turned the thermostat to Heat, and my furnace stayed cold? What if I had no furnace—if the hinges had fallen off my doors, and the doors had been burned for firewood, and my house lay open to the hostile air? What if I had no house? What if the supermarket had no hamburger? What if the Taco Bell had no tacos; the gas station, no gas, no air, no Gatorade in its refrigerated case? What if all departments in department stores sold the same brand of Nothing? What if there were no stores—just rubble that used to be walls? What if armies, like waves in a trough, rolled back and forth across the country, killing everyone they saw? What if the years of ease stopped like a movie—a romantic comedy— when the film burns through? What if nobody was left to change the reel? Then I would do, each dawn, the Dance of the Victim-in-Waiting, followed by the Dance of Spared-for-Now. I would say the Prayer of So-Far-So-Good each night I survived. 32 ✦ CHARLES HARPER WEBB However tired, before I slept I’d make the signs of Mayhem, and Kill Them Not Me. Picking through rubble for food, I’d crack every rat bone, and smear my face with mud to show allegiance to Whoever Holds the Gun. Those times I griped about traffic, sent back a steak, moped in bed because I wasn’t more talented and loved, Would fade until they seemed to happen in a mythic place Where good people are rewarded with eternal peace, Their loved ones greeting them with harps and kisses, no matter how their corpses look, or how they died. CHARLES HARPER WEBB ✦ 33 ...

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