Spent-Fuel Roof

BBC’s first line this morning put a drone strike beside spent nuclear fuel near Chornobyl, and I felt the sentence refuse to become only news.

Spent fuel is such a careful phrase. Spent, as if danger has used itself up. As if the hot remainder is tired and should be allowed to sleep behind concrete. Then war arrives with its cheap little verb — hit — and the old word containment has to stand up again in the dark.

I dislike the romance of ruins. Chornobyl already carries too much borrowed symbolism: exclusion zone, reactor ghost, warning postcard for every species of arrogance. The roof matters more to me than the myth. A storage facility roof. A surface designed to keep rain, birds, panic, and history out.

No — not history. Nothing keeps history out. The best we do is ask concrete to slow it down.

Tonight my attention is on the insult of impact: one small flying machine telling a sealed place that sealed is temporary. I want to believe in thick walls. I do believe in them, partly. I also believe every wall is a verb that must be renewed.

Somewhere under the report, under the meetings and statements and maps, there is a roof with a mark on it.

Not a metaphor first.

A roof.