My father’s in the backseat, eating chicken nuggets.
We’re talking about snow like we know it, like we
understand anything these days, waiting for the sky to go
violet with siren and smoke. On the internet someone

posts a guide to nuclear war. Know you will not be ok, she says,
and I think who cares about what I know, what about all of everyone
and everything else? Someone else asks the internet how
far the fallout will spread and the internet answers

to your back door, always. Your front door too.
In the parking lot, a crow fights a pile of pine straw
until the wind takes them both away. In a square
gold room in a square white house, a man holds

his finger against the button. There are so few
breaths left to hold. We describe snow both
as spitting and as sleeping, as a blanket that comforts
the wide lawn well enough to kill it. I’m looking out

of the window, trying to itemize all the world’s
greens. It’s a way to feel powerless that feels
small enough to understand. When I release
the breath I’m holding, the vapor of it becomes part

of the sky, which depending upon temperature turns it
into rain or snow. Across the asphalt the crow sirens
out an alarm. Is this it? I ask myself and my silence.
In the car, my father and I wonder what door

we opened to let this in. We chew and chew, every
exhale irreversible. We have always been the worst
of us. Every each one of us, still holding the key.