Get indoors.

Ensure all windows are closed, all blinds drawn.

Sit in your assigned chair at your assigned desk. When the instruction is given, slide underneath, clasp your hands above your head, and close your eyes.

Keep nothing with you—no book, no paper, no pen. Do not read aloud. Do not read. Do not speak.

Count silently.

Do not look at the ceiling. Do not watch the lightbulbs sway. Do not look at the sun (not directly, at least).

Close your ears. Close your nose. Open nothing until you're told "it's safe"—by an adult, by a child, by a stranger, by an imaginary friend, by a talking gnu, by anyone or anything. No one says "it's safe" unless absolutely it is.

Do not say "it's safe" unless absolutely it is.

Stay under your desk. Stay hidden. Tell the gnu to "be quiet" and to "stay covered" and "stay safe."

Go with the gnu when he says "it's safe." Let the gnu take your hand by his hoof. Go, the two of you, shag fur and horns and all, out of the school and down toward the river of candy rafts and slow-flowing, molten licorice lava.

Do not taste the river.

Feel the warm of the bright green sun touch your nose. Tell the sun, "Don't touch me unless it's safe."

Laugh when the sun tells a joke. Translate the joke for the gnu. Laugh when the gnu laughs. No gnu likes to laugh alone.

Go with the gnu to the forest.

Find your favorite tree and sit under your favorite branch and place your favorite hand in the shadow of your favorite leaf and watch chlorophyll pulse in your favorite vein.

Do not watch the pulse of light. Do not watch the collision of stars. Do not watch the forging of gold and new metals. This light is old light that's traveled far from the flung universe; this gold is already gone; these metals are no longer new.

Chew a reed.

Lay with the gnu.

Rest your head on the gnu's fur belly. Feel soft. Feel cozy. Feel his heart pulse. Do not itch. Do not listen to his lunch.

Close your eyes.

Rest.

Sleep until it's over.

Sleep until you're awakened by the siren of the All Clear.

Sleep until someone—anyone—says "it's safe."

Then rise, silently, from under your assigned desk to your chair. Then stand.

Do not feel afraid you are alone. Do not feel lost.

Open your ears and open your nose and open your eyes.

Go to the door.

Take your coat. Take your hat.

Return your hands to your pockets.

Do not be alarmed that it's now nighttime and dark.

Do not be alarmed that it's now winter, that it's now cold, that there's snow now and icicles and ice.

Do not be alarmed that the ice-slicked streets now glow.

Do not be alarmed that the hedges and the fields now glow. Do not be alarmed that all of the trees now glow, that the forest is all glowing bare wood and pine.

Do not be alarmed that all of the snow now glows, that when lit by lamps, the snow's blinding.

Do not be alarmed that your mother and your father now glow and all of your friends now glow, all real and imagined. Do not be alarmed that imagination now glows.

Do not be alarmed that your home now glows.

Do not be alarmed that the gnu now glows.

Do not talk to the gnu. Do not tell the gnu "it's safe."

Do not be alarmed that everyone and everything and every all and all now glow.

Do not feel afraid of the fallout: You are the sun now and you are the gnu. You are all and you are everything and you, too, now glow.

Matthew Fogarty is the author of MAYBE MERMAIDS AND ROBOTS ARE LONELY, which was one of Kirkus Reviews' Best Indie Books of 2016.

Read his postcard.

Detail of art on main page courtesy of Marc-Anthony Macon.

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