You Can’t Get There From Here
written by: Catherine Arra
She didn’t speak to them for months after the inauguration, her brain bruised with disbelief they voted for the charlatan; they believed his vile promises, the hate he’d build into walls, bans, bully basics; not only believed but hoped for. “I hope he builds that wall,” her father said on Christmas morning before he went to Mass.
She could barely swallow the wedge of grapefruit lodged in her throat and said nothing, knowing they live in a 2×2 square of retired, gate-locked, Foxed News reality, where identical houses wave American flags, where white and Christian = exclusive American, exclusive patriot, where an Obama or Clinton bumper sticker could incite full-hilt hysterics, “Ya’ll mean ya wanna kill BABIES?” And though her father, the son of immigrants and his wife, an educated, former Peace Corps Volunteer, should know better, old age is nostalgically lonely, scared and confused, watching the news for clues, for the messiah who will resurrect the God-fearing past, good clean homogenized milk, wholesome white bread and a time when fear was strictly verisimilitude.
Then he added, “I hope he locks HER up too.”
She felt her girlhood oppression like 15 tons of memory and blew back in rapid-fire “libtard” facts, “kool-aid” clarity, and just like when she was a girl, he slammed his hardheaded fists on the counter as if Trump himself and decreed, “I’m not talking about this. No more from you.”
- You Can’t Get There From Here - July 22, 2023
- The Velocity of Shattering - August 18, 2021
