Nothing Happened in 1999

A king did not die, a president was not acquitted, a balloon did not fly around the world in twenty days, at 84 with white hair, Joe DiMaggio was not mourned. And air strikes launched street to street in order to bring peace, or a doctor convicted of doctoring death? No, and no, nothing happened, except flowers purple the year before bloomed white, but no viruses named after women spread across the globe, and the word “columbine” did not enter the consciousness of a nation. What about the bomb that made a mistake, or the famous son of a famous president mistaking the ocean for the sky? That year, the weather was unpredictable, that happened, and if anything else did, like shots fired at people praying, no one heard them, and if people prayed for war to become holy, those prayers went unanswered. In Turkey, the ground split open and the 17,000 who would die, let’s say, miraculously, they did not, not in 1999, the year two lifelong enemies shook hands and said there will be peace, but their palms never touched, why lie about that? Let’s say the child from Cuba arrived not an orphan but with his mother, who loved and did not sink into the sea. Let’s not talk about rampages, disasters, conflicts or coupes that never ruined a perfectly good year during which the sun shined on the moon, the earth, and six billion who, for once, got everything right and not a single thing wrong.