Notes From Inside a Bomb Shelter

I write this from inside a bomb shelter, knowing not whether I shall survive to see the setting of the sun. And if I do, wondering the landscape that will greet me.

I am filled with sadness, with a deep and penetrating cold that makes each fibre of my being ache.

This room is a stark shrill cry that the human experiment has been a failure, that the darkness in our collective soul has extinguished any glimmer of light.

I stare into the eyes of those gathered here, the looks of bewilderment, of panic everywhere. The smell of death oozes from the world above, now beyond our view. Some here are quiet. A few I fear will not go so quietly into the night.

I think of my son who lives far away. What must it be like for him? I am sorry I am putting him through such agony. I would die a death ten times over to spare him his anguish.

And for each of those here, there must enough pain and sorrow to fill an ocean. I wish for many things but now I find myself without the ability to wish, to dream, to hope for these are all sentiments I left behind when I entered this shelter.  I am left to witness the world from this Hades.

I notice my hands are trembling but they seem strangely disconnected from me. It is as if I have left my physical being, that the only thing remaining of me is this tablet and these words. And maybe the undeniable truth is that I am already dead and what you now read is not what I am but what I was.

 I sense I am rambling, a series of disconnected thoughts only lining up  because they too are trapped here with no escape. Has any time passed since I began this monologue? Does time even exist anymore?

I guess this is my last will and testament. And if so, I give, devise and bequeath to all those who read this my sincerest apology. I apologize for all that I was not and much of what I was. 

But most of all, I apologize for the world that all of you inherit. A world that would find it necessary and appropriate to do unto others what has been done unto me.

I do find have one last wish, a kind of codicil to my Will. May you inherit a better tomorrow, a day where the sunrise is breathtaking and the sunset radiant.

And please tell my son how much I loved him.