Oh Happy

My back aches when I wake now, I realize it is not my old age after all but only poverty presenting itself in the form of failing mattress springs. The phone overheats with angry rants and desperate pleas, we are collectively losing our minds and yet somehow making our way through the days as though we were capable of it. I drain my savings account to pay for a lifestyle of bare minimums, my roommate moves out and I hoard her clothes, her notebooks, a Great War mentality sits in my spine, inherited through the ages, when the earth moves we do not throw away and this is how I came to cook soup from stone, my people have changed the meaning over the years, we have learned to eat gravel and like it. The dog is confused by all the packed bags. In Kentucky, murderers in uniform are wiped clean of the blood on their hands. Washington burns, burns and hopes the smoke will hide the dead. Twenty-seven years ago I chose this country and I have kept choosing it ever since, why do you make a fool of my love, America? Why do you dishonor the dream upon which your foundation was built?

I return to the drawing board. Rewrite the narrative, adjust to the apocalypse as it moves and undulates beneath us. The mantra under my breath has changed. Now it is simply: survive, because you have to. 

For now, it will have to do.