Before I was interrupted, I was telling you about provincial politics: our Premier—that’s like the Governor, for the Americans in the audience tonight—just bought a private jet for thirty million dollars. Which, if you ask me, is fine as long as you work for it, because in this country we reward merit like any other free nation, we’re just kinder about our investments in the apocalypse, which is always tomorrow and yet never comes. Meanwhile, all anyone can talk about is how our last Prime Minister—that’s like the President, for the Americans in the audience tonight—is dating a pop star, but who cares. I mean, sure, thanks to him you will be houseless, sure, your mother has wept every morning for five months since she got fired, sure, there are no jobs, but that’s life: it’s difficult and you have to wrestle with it in order to be a winner of it. After all, the weak will fall because they could not overcome the muck of our debased, human origins, but that’s life: it goes by quick as the spring’s magnolia bulbs, swept away with heavy rain—that’s like gunfire, for the Americans in the audience tonight—though as long as we hold fast, hold each other through the endless artillery fire from our richer counterparts, we will make it out of this. We are a species in perpetual, collective grief, but that’s life: at the end of the day, it’s night. If only we could do something about it besides plugging away at the computer; that’s the only way to win this fight. Pat my fists dry and keep providing. Develop an impeccable output, like an F-117 Nighthawk scraping loops through the dogged sky, which I saw once when I was small, if you can think of me as ever having been small, like you, back when I had convictions, like you. Though now I’m not sure what they were, and I’m too employed to think about it, and I’m too busy to play right now, go ask your mother, tell her to keep her chin up so her tears fall back into the shallow pools of her eyes, tell her as long as I’m working we’ll be alright. Get your Littlest Pet Shop figurines and make up a story about us as big-eyed animals, one where we get to go on vacations, where we breathe in enough real air to relax—that’s like philosophising, for all the Americans in the audience tonight—but don’t tell me what you come up with, and don’t come in here without knocking, and don’t mind the cracks in the walls and the floors and the doors, and don’t mind the shrapnel and crushed bullet casings and everything I let explode us when I wasn’t watching. I’m sorry about it, but that’s life, and I will take care of us as far away from you as possible, because everything I say is a cento of my father’s words, uncontrollably falling from my mouth, even though I always told you: if I ever start to act like him, scream at me, don’t stop screaming until it’s over, until I return to myself again.
Raniya Chowdhury is a student, emerging writer, and bleeding heart from Southern Ontario. Her work is published or forthcoming in HAD, Some Words, scaffold, and more. You can find her on the Internet @raniyach_ and on the Outernet if you know where to look.
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