By Peter Aronson

Left foot, right foot, one after another, slicing through air, causing an ever-so-slight ripple, a gravitational whisper, the gentlest of swooshes, a micro-trillionth of a gust, the ripple no one sees, feels or touches, interplanetary perhaps, across the universe, but overturning/disturbing/changing nothing, a metaphor for what we control on earth, nada, most of us anyway; We create babies, build houses, raise families, yes that’s true, but beyond that, not much, with rampant disease/massive hunger/never-ending racism/endless war (OMG – War!)/an overheated planet (OMG – Does anyone care?), and this, again, this random, senseless violence (Oh My Freaking God!) – the sheer magnitude of barbarism, the crushing weight of it all, our soul, our being, our symmetry, our light, our ripple of air, sucked in a flash, into a void, a poof, a flicker. Zap. Ripple. Gone. 

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Peter Aronson is a former journalist and attorney and now he writes children’s books, short stories and essays. His first middle-grade novel, Mandalay Hawk’s Dilemma: The United States of Anthropocene, about kids fighting global warming, was published in December 2021. Info about his books can be found at http://www.peteraronsonbooks.com. His short fiction has been published by Shark Reef and Potato Soup Journal.