Clouds Over Reactors

Steam above reactors:
what might be in there?

How false or honest are the possible answers?
Frankly, I don’t care. 

I adore
this not being sure

because I can fill the vaccuum
with my own terror.

I’ve been looking for a place
to put it and keep it from pressing

on my recent joy and calm.  It’s not directly
relevant at all; I don’t have to stress

that I’ll be on fire soon or turn up dripping
skin, tending a body rife with tumors.

Those clouds billow and abstract into threat —
not my threat, though. These rumors

are just art to be savored. The reactors
are my gallery, my museum of doubt.

I sit a long time before the news.
When’s the end coming? I try to work that out.

Someone’s going to burn soon.
It won’t be me.  I can watch it and be glad

even as I sob and gasp at the thought
of lives ending, lives I never had.