sent from: Waterloo Station, London, UK. destination: Jersey City, New Jersey, USA

There once was a boy who was afraid of bombs. Not so much terrorist bombs, although those were around enough to be worrisome. He was afraid of the much bigger, much scarier N-word bombs. Nuclear. Much of it became from a documentary he was shown in school, showing how, if a bomb exploded above his city’s main cathedral, the dome would melt and they showed how, in graphic details, everyone within a 20-mile radius would be wiped out, within 50, fatally wounded, and within 100, who knows. That’s it, he though, dead in an instant. But that wasn’t it; the images returned in his nightmares, and he lived fearing the news that a bomb was on its way. The boy grew up, and learned how to run. 3 miles, 5 miles, 10 miles, eventually a marathon 26.2 miles. Disaster movies came out; Asteroids, Earthquakes, Aliens. Cities in logjam, cars backed up. That’s my way out, he thought, to run, one foot in front of the other. In an hour, that’s 6 or 7 miles, enough to get me out of the initial blast radius. I can do that. No sitting in traffic on a jammed motorway, laden with useless possessions. Just run, head front, arms swinging. How many minutes to get the right clothes on? The good running shoes, saved for just this occasion? One, two, three, and off. 6 miles, one hour, and so on. 26 miles, that’s about 4 or 5 hours, no problem, the mushroom bloom behind him. He sleeps better now.