By Cole Frank.
We are doing cartwheels in the craters left by the impacts of the missiles fired at the behest of the best and brightest of a nation that is famous for its industry and the cheese that its beleaguered dairy farmers eke out at ever slimmer margins. In the twilit morning we will eat our own cheese: a lower quality cheese of course—less fat, more air bubbles—but a cheese we enjoy all the more for our honest circumstances. Because honesty can offset a material deficit. We are enriched by our desperation. We are full for our hunger. We are suffused with gratitude even for the missiles which have taken so many and so much of ours.
To be clear, we do not mean to suggest that we are better off for the missiles. But we are grateful for them nonetheless. Like everything else, they are part of our truth. And it is a truth that cannot be tabulated or decomposed into parts. To live in the light of truth is a gift that cannot be rescinded or even negotiated for that matter. We are grateful for the bubbles in our cheese too. That the absence of cheese inheres in cheese itself is such a wealth.
You’ve come to ask us about this truth, our truth. You ask us about entertainment: TV, music, the internet. We tell you our favorite program is the dew evaporating from the spines of the Saguaro. We tell you our favorite music is the scrape of the windswept sand. We tell you our internet is the total and constantly shifting topography of the dunes. The total and constantly shifting topography of the dunes is also our favorite poem.
We do not hate you but we also do not privilege you. And you hate us for that. That hate, that missileroot, is also part of our truth.
Most importantly, we are never not dancing.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cole Frank is a writer living in beautiful Pittsburgh, PA.