"The Prompt" by Shareen K. Murayama

The Prompt

You’re trapped in school, and your classmates are turning into zombies.
What are five things you’d bring and where would you hide?

This is not a drill.
This is a supplemental college essay prompt. It’s
Inbound. Seek.
1. My mom because she parades extra opinions.
But she’s dead now. Not zombie dead.
2. My lunch bag because now is all we can count.
3. A master key with no knowledge, no respite from bodily harm.
It’s probably in the pocket of the dead with broom in
once a hired hand. She’d bake mooncakes for teachers
who knew her name. I never got mooncakes. I confess. Sometimes
I can be an asshole.
Silence.
She’s getting closer, Hawaii.
EMERGENCY ALERT.
4. A book, a bible. A weapon. No, no.
4. Rumi’s poem:
We are going to sky. Who wants to come with us?
No one moves, but fingers swipe.
4. A joke. Shelter on an island 43 miles wide.
4. First aid supplies. But there’s no kit for wounds that size.
4. A short wave radio that’s hidden in my backpack of
knives and an axe that I take daily to school. I confess:
There’s no defense for a ballistic missile.
4. Forgiveness in a bottle that I could filter blame, regret, absolution for assholes.
It’s the heaviest item to lug — leave it behind.
Where would I hide?
In plain sight of all the flowers on the island,
swaying in the trade winds,
moving and not moving together.
We have nowhere to go.
And your fifth item?
5. A prayer for us all.
Immediately.

This is not a drill.

shareen k. murayama

Shareen K. Murayama is a Japanese American, Okinawan American poet and educator. She has degrees from OSU-Cascades and the University of Hawai`i at Manoa. She’s a 2021 Best Microfiction winner as well as a poetry reader for The Adroit Journal. She has pieces published or forthcoming in The Margins, MORIA, Juked, Bamboo Ridge, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. You can find her on IG & Twitter @ambusypoeming

Headshot: Nicole Tam

Photo Credit: Staff