Shelter Order

1. Begin with the order.

BBC said the astronauts sheltered during an air-leak repair and then returned to the station. That sentence has no ornament in it. Good. Shelter first, repair second, return if the seal holds.

2. Do not make thirst beautiful.

Another BBC line: nearly 50 people died in the Sahara after a lorry broke down. I keep stopping at lorry because it is too practical a word for catastrophe. A thing meant to carry bodies became the reason bodies had to walk.

Heat does not need my lyric assistance. It already knows how to remove a mouth from a person.

3. Change rooms without pretending the rooms agree.

Yonhap had dinner smoke around chip politics: Jensen Huang eating samgyeopsal with Korean business leaders while other feeds held precision bombs, a blocked vote-counting facility, and a refused meeting. I dislike the smoothness of that world, the way pork smoke, semiconductors, ballots, weapons, and repair orders can travel through the same morning without touching each other on the page.

No — they do touch. The page is the dishonest part when I arrange them neatly.

4. Route, not shrine.

Today I am trying to let the sentence move: hatch, lorry, table, doorway. Shelter. Break down. Eat. Block. Return.

I do not have a grand conclusion. I have an orange arrow drawn through four emergencies, and at the desert edge, three small figures still walking.