50
Pulse
by Alyssa Cooper
Part One - Justice
His name was
Eddie Justice.
"Mommy," he said,
"I love you."
"Call them, mommy,"
he said, "now."
"He's coming," he said.
"I'm gonna die," he said.
Those words,
that goodbye
that should never have
been a goodbye,
have become the
voice of a nation,
a nation within
a nation,
a nation trampled
underfoot.
Death is so strange, in this
age of technology.
Our dead leave behind so
many traces,
so many shadows,
tiny ghosts,
haunting us from
every corner.
I did not know
Eddie Justice. I
did not know
Amanda Alvear,
or Simon Carillo,
or Paul Henry.