Recorded by the author on July 26, 2024 at The Mark Twain House & Museum
I fell in love with your tastes of freedom and apple pie. Your everyday democracy that would not be given so kindly with others just pulled me deeper in love with you. You had stars in your eyes and stripes on your button up, and I hung you up high for everyone to see. That wasn’t the only reason I fell for you. Our pit stops at McDonalds before going to the drive-in theater was pivotal to my ‘American teenage dream’ and you wanted that more than anything. I was proud to be yours, I loved to be yours.
Day trips to New York for a famous slice of pizza, an apple pie for dessert, and even a show off of Broadway, for us to enjoy. You’d even surprise me with one of those tourist ‘I <3 NY’ tote bags, that were always too pathetic to buy for yourself. Your passions, everything that you loved, added to your complex persona. The way you pitched each and every baseball, the spiral you threw in every white-laced football pulled me in deeper. Not every part of you was perfect. There were spray tanned fights with your old soul. Stuttering, stumbling, stacking each and every word together, but I stayed. I had nowhere else to go.
It’s hard to think you praised me and your beliefs synonymously. I hated your xenophobic ideals and the feeling of old age whenever you muttered a single word out of your totalitarian lips. I was in the class of ‘27 and you, in the doomsday class of 2025. Before you controlled my being and my state of self.
America, my home of the free and land of the brave, I beg that you save me from your wrath.
Our ‘great’ nation has
Fallen into the pits of
Political evil