America Screams
Nighttime in America, the darkness grows still around me as my country screams at me. Her face is soot stained save for the immaculate flesh unveiled by streaming tears. My country screams at me with a voice so broken and hollow I can tell she’s been shouting for too long. Her clothes are caked in mud and drying crimson, her features sharp and lean - malnourished.
She waits till the other voices have melted to nothing, and then she resumes her invective, but her choking rasp is unintelligible. I make out bits and pieces, parts about empty sigils and broken promises. I try to calm her, placate her, anything I can do so that she’ll stop screaming at me. And that is when she finds the strength of throat to half whisper that she fears her soul is shrinking. She says she is tired of the constant flow of blood and tears, says she just wants to be whole again.
I ask her how I can help, she hands me pieces of parchment and hugs me. Her voice, more beautiful now, whispers sweetly in my ear the words: “Never forget how much I love you, all of you.” And then I am alone, with her papers. I don’t even need to look at them because I know what they say. They begin simply yet brilliantly:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union…
Daytime in America, the work begins.
She waits till the other voices have melted to nothing, and then she resumes her invective, but her choking rasp is unintelligible. I make out bits and pieces, parts about empty sigils and broken promises. I try to calm her, placate her, anything I can do so that she’ll stop screaming at me. And that is when she finds the strength of throat to half whisper that she fears her soul is shrinking. She says she is tired of the constant flow of blood and tears, says she just wants to be whole again.
I ask her how I can help, she hands me pieces of parchment and hugs me. Her voice, more beautiful now, whispers sweetly in my ear the words: “Never forget how much I love you, all of you.” And then I am alone, with her papers. I don’t even need to look at them because I know what they say. They begin simply yet brilliantly:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union…
Daytime in America, the work begins.