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I.
I tried to rally support from them. But tried is only tired with the 'I' pushed around. How appropriate. So there I stood,
writing letter after letter, none of which would mentioned missing lips, hips, or fingertips. These would be inspiring! These
would make a difference! - "Dear Mr. President, I write to inform you what you are doing is wrong." And I sent these letters
knowing I would never lay eyes on a single response. And the truth of the matter was it just wasn't in me to care enough. I'd
already demolished my apartment and began to construct a makeshift headquarters and each night I'd lay with an orgy of contradicting
strategies, all with the intentions of either creating my demise or actually doing something with my life.

I turned to the streets and gathered up an army of those who were also opposed to the beings they had watched themselves turn
into. We took up weapons. We attached construction paper ribbons to our chests. Exhausted, but intent, thousands of fingers
pecked away relentlessly on typewriter keys, just dreaming up our propaganda. We dropped leaflets on countertops, where they
talked alcoholics into getting the tab a few hours early. We shouted our world into the ears of the streetwalkers, who immediately
turned in their flesh-toned business suits for flak jackets. We were unconventional and daring, breathing life into words that
had never seen the light of day. And these words turned the skeptical into believers of the cause. We weren't ready. Not just
yet. But we began to line the streets, exploding with pride and integrity. With sincerity! We were the past and the present! And
let God strike me down if we weren't the future.

We didn't believe in endings. Only beginnings.




II.

It was only half a month ago that she sat at home stitching up sexual connotations to her chest in a series of empathic maneuvers
while attempting to fashion a fashionable explanation explaining the differences between her words and her actions. She had
successfully attacked every one of her coming breaths and beat the sentences back down her throat, constructing her indifference
perfectly upon her frail body. So, instead, she substituted cigarette after cigarette for own ideologies, unconsciously sending
out silent S.O.S. calls from her bedroom window.

She was defenseless against her television set, which continued to throw infomercials and buy-at-home programming at her. "For
this astonishingly low price of three-installments-of-more-money-than-you-have-ever-seen-in-your-entire-existence, you can buy
this bracelet made of some exotic metal mined, in quite the most adventurous and daring ways, mind you, at the base of some
no-name, but spewing nonetheless, volcanic rock in...Barbados? Or, better yet, you could buy yourself a life." A smile crept
across her face. She wasn't geographically illiterate and she was well aware that Barbados hadn't produced any natural disasters
in ages.

This is what she couldn't stand.

So she'd eye the middle-aged man on the television screen, the one that had to be too handsome to be real, and she'd fantasize
pushing the edges of her television apart wide enough for her to slip through. And then she'd do something disgustingly generic
like slit the guys throat. Or maybe she'd fuck him first. It really wasn't something she felt deserved a lot of thought. The point
is, she wasn't happy. So she knelt at the side of her bed like she did every other night and, without abatement, bitched about her
life to anybody who would listen. She reminded God that a miracle was supposed to be delivered to her days before.

and God absolutely hates the people.




III.

She slipped into bed that night and when she awoke she was hurling fire from her throat. The forest of flames compromised her
position and she sighed hard at the continuous impossibilities that she was being faced with. However, she found a comfort in the
feeling of the heat scorching and licking on the insides of her thighs. It was the first real emotion she'd felt in such a long
time. She just couldn't stay there any longer. So she fled from the only sense of familiarity that she had, the one she had always
clutched to her chest.

When she and I first encountered each other, we breathed in deep, the whole time calculating the longevity of our breaths. We
were so close. Close enough as to where I could taste the spearmint off of her lips and smell the incense sleeking across her body.
She had never felt as if she belonged to a cause as much as she did mine and I knew this. I, myself, had never felt the desire to
turn my inevitable empire from a monarchy to a dualarchy until now. And she knew this. She was my Scipio Africanus and I was
her Jesus Christ. And when I told her this, I could see my words clashing against the first-person, third-person perspective she had
created around herself enough to create firecrackers and bottle-rockets at the corners of her eyes. She was caught off-guard and
teetered mercilessly on the thread of reality that she called comfortable. It was all falling into place. The stitched-up red carpet
was unwinding itself throughout the entire nation.

And everyone was ours for the taking.




IV.

Glass breaks and I'm revolting to a soundtrack of disheartened harps playing 'Taps' across this battlefield of imaginary borders and
boundaries. Government leaders will smoke cigarettes thinner than your wrists and huddle in corners while you and I, hand in hand,
march towards them, singing at the top of our lungs a song that they’ve never heard before or never thought they could. Telling each
other they love themselves one last time before you and I take out our guns and send brains onto walls.

And, God, I've never been so happy

This is change. This is something new. 'You know, you look really good right now,' I will smile and kiss your forehead, your cheek,
your lips in between the tempo of metal-on-metal dance-party music. We’ve been throwing Molotov cocktails for eleven days now and have
been gassed thirteen times thus far. It feels like a war. No, it is a war! I mean, it was. But now it's over and you and I, we won.
This revolution thing is exciting! This purpose is so gratifying. This change is refreshing. It feels nice to make a difference every
once in a while. We're going to be remembered in text books, you know, you and I.

Do you hear that? that's the sound of reform on the lips of the masses, or what would have been the masses if their corpses weren't
busy decorating the streets. This is the sound of change and finality in the same breath. This is the justification of my entire
existence and, truth be told, I've never felt anything so sincere.




V.

It was three nights later when I stood at the edge of a burnt out skyscraper and took in the city like I never had before. There was
an array of colors that, until that night, had gone by unnoticed. Pinks and oranges and blues and greens all weaved their way throughout
each other until the patterns bred a magnificence that had yet to be named. I thought to myself how depressingly beautiful this all way. It
was a shame that there were so many people who would never be able to witness nature in its natural form. The thought of how the metropolis
would feel enveloped in silence is one that had never crossed my mind, but the realization that I was witnessing just that put me at
ease. This was the calm that one lives their entire lives longing for and I wasn't sure if I liked it or not. What was once the most elegant
of skylines had been reduced to only a war ravaged wasteland. The skeletal remains of society stood in the form of a single building that
had managed to withstand the constant barrage of bombshells, far on the horizon. The taste of gunpowder laced with blood still lingered on
my lips - the same taste that I first tasted on her lips. With the thought of her, she announced her presence with a kiss to the back of
my neck. I stretched my arm out to my left side and opened my hand, awaiting the moment I'd feel her fingertips brush against my palm.
Together, we surveyed the nation that we had made our home and we prepared to hurl comets through the windshields of oncoming traffic that
sought to dethrone us. Together, we pressed time in and against itself until it gave it and blessed us with the feeling of infinity. And
together, as one, we admired the catastrophe that we had created.