Save the Cheerleader, Save the World
Last night TMZ posted a pre-award show pic of Hayden Panettiere
with a blond updo, soft glam makeup & 1989-2026 printed in blood
red font on the bottom of her cotton-candy-colored gown.
She is radiant & 36 & I had to have this wrong.
It is 11:37 PM & I’ve had a few glasses of merlot
& she just can’t be dead & they don’t say how she passed
but I’m sure they’ll kill themselves to find out tomorrow.
I had just finished bingeing Heroes Season 1 on Netflix last week.
Claire Bennet’s an indestructible badass,
walking through fire, not getting burned,
mending her bones, regrowing her tissue,
dying over & over.
Hayden was 17 in 2006 when Heroes premiered & I was 37.
My kids watched it with me every Monday night.
She was their superhero, millennial idol, ice princess.
(Wait, how can Michelle Trachtenberg be dead too?)
& why are all child star deaths still a surprise
as week after year we watch them battle
their Sylars & Lindermans
who cut them open, absorb their light—
while no one comes to the rescue.
I stopped watching after Season 1.
I remembered everything afterward was a downhill journey.
The cheerleader was alive.
The world was saved.
What better ending is there?
*
Victoria Nordlund is the Poet Laureate of Glastonbury, CT, and lead master teaching artist of The Nook Farm Writers Collaborative at The Mark Twain House & Museum. Her poetry collections Wine-Dark Sea and Binge Watching Winter on Mute are published by Main Street Rag. She is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize Nominee, whose work has appeared in Rust+Moth, Chestnut Review, trampset, and elsewhere. Visit her at VictoriaNordlund.com
