Unknowing Niche

After the 2019 El Paso Shooting

I am not
the hero, starting
at the Foot Locker as the barrel heats

and cracks, expediating towards
an explosion and
gathering children,

delicate and vigorous as the origin of time.
I am not the gunman, self-righteousness
deciding what makes others

outsiders. Not the invaded
dead either—the living mutilated
into forced migration. Nor am I

the woman only thinking boxes are
falling. I am only
the late responder, vapid

with flies, performing as the falling
box, shifting on
the shelf, in a gerund

of gravity, hatching only through
halt. It is not fair: bullets
unlock

my jaw. Their robbed hands
suture my hand
through vicarious

bandages. Death
—the inevitable wilderness—produces
my stipend. There is no barrier

in a barrel after
all, just the walls raised after
fire. As we do not

live
in the best of all
possible worlds, we reside

on horseback, hoisted
as bystanders, or bucked
into targets by George Catlin’s

Dying Buffalo, whom
he intentionally missed
the heart of so he could paint

H.E. Riddleton is a neurodivergent, mentally ill poetess who, in addition to writing, searches for pretty things on the ground, collects trash for her trash journal, and watches Star Trek: DS9 with her partner. Her most recent and forthcoming publications can be found in Cold Mountain Review, Coffin Bell Journal, Science Write Now, The Dillydoun Review, and Fairytale Review. She’s an editor at Newfound, a tutor, and a senior undergrad at UTA.