Disaster North

Tuesday morning, Marcus holds his shoulders like a question mark. The intake nurse
marks the calendar: Thursday—property destruction.
She’s never wrong.

This is what the body learns:
to taste copper before the lockdown bell,
to pack your things before anyone says transfer,
to know which overnight staff will pretend
the camera’s broken, which therapist
will cry in her car, who will quit by Christmas
by the way they hold their clipboard in October.

Keisha, eleven, reads the air like radar—
knows David’s meds are off
by the frequency of his blinking,
calls out, “Mr. Tony, get ready,”
thirty seconds before the new kid explodes.
She learned this at home, mapping
her mother’s boyfriend’s breathing,
the exact pitch that meant
take your brother next door, now.

The ones who survive here grow antennae
in their sleep, feel tomorrow’s violence
coil in today, hear the group home closing
in the administrator’s smile. Even the young ones
know which promises are lies
before the words finish forming.

In morning rounds we discuss therapeutic interventions.
Marcus counts doorframes, exits, heartbeats.
He knows what we won’t admit:
that mercy here depends on shift changes,
funding cycles, which senator’s daughter
attempts suicide. His shoulders
pull tighter, a compass needle
finding its disaster north.

We call it hypervigilance,
write it in their files like pathology.
But Michael’s grandmother knew the mill
would close six months early:
three generations trained to feel collapse
before the brick loosens.

Thursday arrives. The window breaks clean.
Marcus’s fist finding the glass.

We document impulsive behavior.
The nurse writes it, knowing
this was prophecy: the future
pulling backward through a child
who learned to read time’s tells,
to feel the bruise forming
before the blow lands.

She files the report. Stays late
to hold ice to his knuckles,
to not say what they both know:
that seeing it coming
is not the same as stopping it,
that some futures arrive
no matter how early the body knows.

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