PAIGE ACKERSON-KIELY
CRY BREAK
The day the news rolled in that half of the world’s population had perished via an anticipated but still shocking chemical explosion, even the Country Music Station recanted on its promise: "All Country All The Time." Death on a large scale always takes precedence and allows one to act swiftly and without guilt. I kissed my brother-in-law at my mother-in-law’s funeral, the ill-fitted plank of his torso hewn to my grief, so that afterward it was easier to be around the happy stuff everyone seemed to remember. It was all very confusing, as the radio put it, "complete mayhem." I thought about going to the school early to pick up my daughter, but decided against it—all those children parroting sorrow, what did they know? Sure, a few of them had been slapped, spit upon, held down and raked over—some had been told the truth: you won’t go far, you won’t go anywhere at all. I love my daughter, the pale gloaming of her hair a minor song of my continuance. Unlike the Country Music Station, the day the news rolled in that half of the world’s population had perished, I did my chores as usual, putting the dirty clothes into the washer and removing the clean ones from the dryer as if the world could be soothed by the delicate cycle and the loving heat of my steady machine. It was as though I knew I was not going anywhere until an anticipated but still shocking chemical explosion allowed me to perish from my daughter, my swift, guiltless death an event that would bring context to her sorrow and allow her to remember, unbidden, the happy stuff, which I’m sure happened daily, like writing your name in the fog on the shower door, for example. I thought of the way the singers that particular station favored created a chest-pulse, commonly known as the cry-break in Country Music, and how I had, while doing the laundry or tending that which required my tenderness, until that moment, been really listening for it.