30 years ago today
The world changed
Many don't think of it as much
Some weren't even born
But that day was
Chernobyl

The worst man made
Nuclear disaster
In recorded history
Happened

Human error
Incorrect handling
Of lethal material
Killed hundreds of thousands

Yet it was covered up
Until another country
Sounded the alarm

Words like
Radiation
Irradiated
Poisoning
Reactor

Mean nothing
Until paired with
Lethal
And
Fatal

People died horrific deaths
That no science fiction movie
Can do justice
Families torn apart forever

Skin coming off the body
Urine smelling like sulfur
Stool with mucus
Intestines and lungs
Coming out of the mouth
While tongues fell out
And pupils burst

No story or book or movie
Can explain this kind of horror
And yet on
April 26th, 1986
It happened

Many don't remember
But the stories get passed down
I was 3 in 1986
I lived in the USSR
I lived in Belarus

Belarus
Where over 60% of the radioactive
Fallout landed
We weren't told
For 5 days

It was a secret
An embarrassment to the government
Who cared little about the people
Breathing this killer air
As long as the government could
Save face

We were all outside
For those 5 days
Especially on May 1st
It was May Day
A celebration with parades
And flowers

Radiation is odorless
Colorless
No one can spot it with the naked eye
It can be absorbed through
The skin undetected

Finally because of pressure from
Other European governments
The public was told
The radioactive cloud reached
Around the world

Pandemonium reigned
People were panicking
Crying
Not knowing what to do

My mother took me
To the train station
My grandfather being the
Town photographer knew people
We didn't wait in the long line

The only place with an updated
Geiger meter, to test me
If I was hot
That was the term for being exposed
You and/or your clothes would
Be hot

By the grace of HaShem himself
I was negative in testing
But my family never got themselves
Checked or tested

My father worked on a Tarmac
At an airport in a different town
For all those 5 days
With his shirt off

His 35th birthday was the day before
On April 25th
It was hot all those days as him and
Others worked away in the sun

After the news broke
They bulldozed the Tarmac
And ground
Because too much radiation
Had seeped in

But my family still doesn't know
If any of their health problems
Stem from that catastrophe
30 years ago today

And as someone who was tested
And found negative
With ME
Hashimoto's being one of the viruses
In my system

Chernobyl
Will always be a part of my past
For I will never know the truth
In whether it had a part
In this
The haunting will be there

And that's another reason why
This can never ever happen again