The Trinity Test Gone Wrong

Maybe if the first test had gone differently, were be in a different place now. Probably not. The metal tower shuddered first, A whisper before the desert cracked, As fire in violent hunger burst Through physics that we could not track. ​The numbers lied; the equations failed; The ignition caught and would not die. A blinding wall of white prevailed, Consuming earth, devouring sky. ​It ate the wire, the steel, the sand, It drank the atmosphere like thread, And cast across the scorched, dead land A deadly fallout, dense and red. ​The shockwave roared for miles unspent, A heavy, suffocating wave; It cracked the bedrock as it went And turned the basin to a grave. ​For days the silent embers burned, A poisoned scar that would not fade, Until the shuddering nations learned The price of weapons we had made. ​We watched the dark fallout descend, The ruined soil, the ash-choked breath, And saw in one miscalculated end The sudden, total face of death. ​No power plants were ever built, No missiles stacked in underground hold; We buried deep our fear and guilt, And left the split nucleus cold. ​The silos crumbled back to dust, The labs were padlocked, left to rust, A world turned back from reaching high, To keep the sky from burning dry. #Explosion