A found poem on yesterday's mass shooting in DC, sourced here
At
5 a.m., my alarm erupted
with its usual blend of static and pop music,
the
start of another day
I
was in the car at 5:15
and pulled through the gates to the base at
6:15,
handing my ID card to one of the police
officers
at the gate as I always do.
Two of them
would reportedly
be dead within a few hours.
I’m
a civilian contractor for the Navy,
and in the five weeks I’ve been assigned
to work at the
Navy Yard in declassification,
I
have come to love the base. I
t’s
a quiet, small-town alcove in
the
midst
of the city,
and it has gorgeous
views
of the river,
a relaxed atmosphere, and a Dunkin’ Donuts
just
steps from my desk.
There are always military personnel around,
but, to me, it seems as though
the base is mostly civilian —
a
bunch of lucky professionals
in
D.C.’s hidden,
suburban-like
Navy
base.
We
civilians
can enjoy most of what the base has, including
the
convenience store, bar and some of the best
crab soup I have ever had.
The base’s many
monuments
and museums make it a perfect place to
take a long walk.
During the
summer,
there were even base-wide ice cream socials
every other
Thursday.
And a few days
ago, on 9/11,
the Navy held a gun salute
at the moment
when the first plane
hit the first
tower.
Working here
feels like being
a part of a
unique, thriving
community.
About
8:30
Monday
morning,
the
base-wide
broadcast system
announced a lockdown
and instructed us to shelter
in
place
.
From our third floor window,
we saw SWAT teams
clinically
moving
up the street
with their
weapons drawn,
but we heard
only rumors
for the next two hours.
We heard some radio
and Twitter
news,
and a bit of
Internet news,
and lots of people were getting text
messages from friends and family.
We
were all just
shouting out the latest information
we
had. The number of shooters kept
increasing
and so did the number of victims.
Then we heard
that some victims
had died, then
that an admiral
had been shot.
One
of my co-workers
saw a woman walking up
the street bleeding from her head.
We tried to work but couldn’t focus.
[For
up to the minute
information about the shooting, check
When
the lockdown was first announced,
we rolled our eyes at the man
in
our outer office
who told us to stay away
from the windows
He seemed to be
having a panic attack
.
It
wasn’t obvious
yet
that
something major
was happening. I
t
seemed far more likely that
this
was a drill or some kind of mistake.
As we learned
more, we stayed safe in our office,
behind two
secure doors
that require
pass codes for entry. Sitting with my friends,
it almost felt
safe.
About
10:30,
we were moved to the basement of our building,
into a small
library. They counted us as we went by.
I
w
a
s
N
o.
7
0
.
We huddled together
in the back
of the room,
sitting on the
floor.
An older man
near us observed that being in that room
on the ground level probably
made us less safe than
if we had stayed
where we were.
As we huddled on
the floor,
C
R
AM
PI
N
G
U P ,
an alarm went off
It
took us a moment
to realize that it was the library’s
security
system going off
erroneously.
We were a bit tense
but mostly calm.
A few minutes
passed,
and they finally
\
made an
announcement.
A woman near me wouldn’t
stop
talking so we could hear.
I shushed her more forcefully
than I would have thought possible,
and she silenced
herself immediately.
My Marine colonel grandfather would have
been proud.
Then, it happened.
\
“Hands up!
Get your hands up!
Everybody to the back of the room!”
I jolted off
my rear
into a crouched
position
and looked
around.
I
quickly
realized that I was in
the
back of the room already
Somehow, that didn’t make me
feel any better.
I unlocked my
phone
to call my wife.
Another
man’s phone
rang in that moment of silence,
and everyone glared at him,
like it was his fault.
We couldn’t hear
what was going
on in the hallway
where the yelling had come from,
but it seemed
to have been
just a
misunderstanding.
No
one
ever explained
what
happened.
A
few
minutes later,
someone
asked
whether anyone
had a
medical condition
or needed
to
use
the
bathroom.
They
started taking us to the bathroom in
groups
of two
Someone found candy
and passed it around
I
got up and
kicked myself for not thinking more
about the room
when
I had walked
into it.
I
took that time
to note the exact
position of the
door, the windows
, and something
I could use as a weapon.
The
best
possible
weapon
was
a
book,
a
big
one
called
“Congress
and the
Nation.”
Even in that
moment,
I still smiled at the thought
of killing a
terrorist with “Congress and the Nation.”
A
few minutes later, they
moved us
to another building.
\I grabbed my
co-workers and said that I thought
we should stick
together and that we
should not be at the beginning or the end of
the line,
just in case. We got outside and jogged
to the food
court,
where there were
bathrooms and hundreds of other
confused people.
And
now I’m preparing to leave the Navy Yard, still confused,
after a very different day than I imagined
having
when
I left home at 5 in the morning.
Ryan is a
civilian contractor for the Navy.
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