We couldn’t come up with another name for what this day is. Let’s fold the letters back & forth to spell: They Continue Killing Us. Someone at the governor’s hotel is fucking someone against a marble bathroom counter while thinking about the next version of us they want to get rid of. I’m conflicted by the sight of my friend wearing a safety pin. I want to reach across the room. How are you? My brain feels like a mashed-up runway of links shared on social media while I sit in a room filled with books & friends & their dogs & my head is empty except for a single thought: I’m not the only one who feels this way. On the bus I pay attention to the way people use their phones. No one clicks on anything with a picture & a headline. It’s enough. There’s a wire hanger between my shoulder blades barely holding together a small pain, reminding me I’ve been complacent & complicit. A bell stretches out inside me, tolling my own deafness. My mother crossed an ocean with 135 other people hiding in a fishing boat without water for days. When was the last time you thought about your own mother crawling. My father hid in his sister’s basement for three years because he didn’t want to fight. He didn’t believe the jungle was for killing. So he became an undocumented citizen in the country he was born.