Invasion

eagles screamed across the sky on tuesday
i was busy picking up children
driving them to soccer, after school.
my husband busy working. or daydreaming.
maybe he was making dinner when the invasion
poured from the storm clouds and all our
metals melted like water. and all our soldiers died.
and all our men, women and children died.

i hid with my kids in a ditch, where
we were halfway to soccer practice
our car had melted like mercury around us.
we tumbled onto the road with all the other cars
melting. we ran, through plastic and foam
debris all soaked in mercurous metal,
fleeing the invisible lasers that sliced
limbs off like flying scalpels. my kids and I
were unstruck, so far. we dove into the ditch.
we held onto each other there, too afraid
to run any farther with the bleeding dead,
the screaming eagles in the sky shooting us down,
we running dead. blood and melted metal
ankle-deep in that ditch.
i plucked an infant's plastic sippy cup
from the highway flood where we hid. the lid was still attached.
i pulled it off. inside, half empty of blood and milk.

i had to be strong for the kids' sake.
they were both weeping into my chest
this infant's cup, half full of nothing,
i drank. i dipped the cup into the ditch's wounded flood
i drank again, this time all acrid blood and acrid metal
i poured it over my children's heads.
the eagles screaming overhead to kill us all.
i tried to make my children drink.