(A deer, the moon, my soul, and death.) when they exposed us
to the radiation, we were told
it was no big deal. I remember
one guy telling me, Look, it’s
nothing. He stepped behind
the red line that was warning us.
It was just tape, along the floor.
But we found out the tape meant
nothing. That they were wrong.
It was our bodies. I told the boss
I wanted a dosimeter. We were
allowed to request dosimeters.
He said, yes, but that he was also
allowed to deny requests. I asked
him how much radiation we’d been
exposed to. Exposed, he said.
Exposed, he said again. Listen
to this guy, he said to the room,
Someone went to grad school.
I went to grad school. I couldn’t
get a job. I got a job. We had
to sign waivers. They told us
there were dangers. They didn’t
tell us about the radiation. I
remember the guys in there,
how they said it was the most
money they’d made in their
lives. It wasn’t much. But we
were used to minimal wage.
It paid more. They told us
there were dangers. And I
remember how the buildings
looked sick. Even the buildings.
I remember a deer I saw that
looked like it had every cancer
in the book. I remember how
the moonlight was angry that
night. How I stood there.
Midnight shift. The moon
acting like the sun. And
the night haunted by our bodies.
• • •
I have been kissed and I have killed and
I mean by this that I have had the gift
of a person’s lips being pressed deep
onto/into mine, the rain drowning us
so peacefully in the warm Cincinnati
night air of 2002 when I thought my
life would be bookended by someone
holding me in the way you hold new-
borns and the way you hold the soon-
to-be dead, and I was young when I
enlisted and I did not know what we
would do and I would do, and what
I would do would be to support all of
the bombings and my base dropped
bombs every hour on the hour for as
long as the war lasted and the war
lasted and the war lasted and then
it didn’t and then we went home to
have our lives and the average life
is about 26,000 nights—now imagine
them haunted by 26,000 nightmares,
and imagine the ecstasy when you
think there might be love, but you
find they don’t stay when you wake
screaming in the night, and the last
one told me, Do you know when you
scream, you don’t sound normal,
and I asked what she meant, and
she said, You sound like a little
boy. You sound just like a little boy.
And she left. And I can still feel
her lips sometimes. When I pray
• • •
Ron Riekki has been awarded a 2014 Michigan Notable Book, 2015 The Best Small Fictions, 2016 Shenandoah Fiction Prize, 2016 IPPY Award, 2019 Red Rock Film Fest Award, 2019 Best of the Net finalist, 2019 Très Court International Film Festival Audience Award and Grand Prix, 2020 Dracula Film Festival Vladutz Trophy, 2020 Rhysling Anthology inclusion, and 2022 Pushcart Prize. Right now, Riekki’s listening to “Ballerina Black // Microphones in the Mattress (Official Video).”