A notification at three AM. An explosion. A burning house. Officials don’t know what or why.

He types something. Deletes it.

Types something else. Deletes that too.

Once he believed you could say a true thing and it would stay true. Now he watches words twist in their very sharing.

His smoke detector has been beeping intermittently for days. Low battery. The warning about warnings goes unheeded.

Everything is burning or seems about to burn and everyone is saying why and no one is saying they don’t know.

He scrolls. The (death) count rises. More voices. Their certainty like oxygen.

Outside his window a siren going somewhere. The everyday catastrophe at three AM.

The smoke detector beeps.

His screen lights up. Alert.

His thumb on glass.