Agent Orange

I feel him in my deepest parts, his words, his intentions. The despair of loss, the twangs of fear. He infiltrates my dreams, my morning routine, my evening conmute. My entire immediate bubble is reading, consuming, discussing, discoursing, coasting, cursing, denying and battle crying. My inner child is crying. I am in a place of no reprieve. A place where escape feels like consent because a moment lost is… a moment lost.

Conversely joining the chatter without rest feels exhausting, overwhelming and hopeless within. My tiny voice is lost in the calamity of it all, as I scream and I scream to the same people who wholeheartedly agree with me. And I’m tired of talking about what we did wrong or what comes next. I just want to grab everyone by the shoulders, look them in the eye, and scream “What will become of us? He has meddled in places he did not belong and he, like us, is doomed!”

He doesn’t belong here.

He doesn’t belong. Here.

Like a brutal rape we have been taken, hastily, without remorse — he will be everywhere, he will find his way into our text books and all of history, he will worm his way into our legislation and stock market. He will consume us just as our lowest common denominators desperately wanted to destroy themselves.

And so, like a fortress in peril, I feel myself shutting down. Gates closing, eyes shuttered, the priority now set on keeping the poison out rather than killing it. Because he can’t have my mind and he can’t have my heart. Because he appears to be winning. Against all odds, he is still winning. So I must retreat to safety.

Where do we go from here? When no place is safe and the imminent tragedy is all the more predictable? How do we fight? Do we push as hard as we can now, hoping to evade escalation, risking depletion and exhaustion and voices worn coarse and weak? Or do we escape, steeling our optimism and saving our energy for the final battle when it all falls to pieces?

And it will. Whether he stays or goes, it will

all fall. To pieces.