Tonight's Poet Corner: Sonnet Solstice #244
Twenty Minutes by Belinda Roddie Twenty minutes before the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, I sat in the cockpit of my plane, the glassy dome concealing my screams. I was only then eighteen years old, new to war, and consumed by a panic attack while trying to fly the patrol. I witnessed the mushroom cloud swell in front of me, the sky, once blue, going gray and red from the inferno. I managed to fly back to base, and as I sat crying into my hands, I know my friend from school sat beside me, a mask of stoicism on his face. He pulled me into his arms, his hair lit with gold.