The first and most important thing that happened to me when I got to San Francisco was that I learned what it felt like to be alone and penniless, to have no tie to the world but fear, hunger, and need.
Operation Doorstep
The first nuclear blast broadcast live on television took place March 17, 1953, in northwestern Nevada. Operation Doorstep was meant to determine the effect of a 16-kiloton nuclear explosion on fifty automobiles, two wood-frame houses, eight backyard bomb shelters, and a goodly number of mannequins. The houses were built specially for the test, and the other objects were carefully arranged, as though for a dollhouse. The ostensible purpose of all this was “to show the people of America what might be expected if an atomic burst took place over the doorsteps of our major cities.”
https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/operation-doorstep-1953

My Love Language is Midwestern (and other poems)
nervous people are addicted to bragging in public about unconditional love
as it relates to their new dogs

The Love We Deserve
“I don’t want him in this house,” my mother said. It was within that month-long period after Thanksgiving and before Christmas, and she was talking about my boyfriend at the time.