A friend posted a meme on Facebook that directed us scrollers to choose one from a grid of twelve. Options included items like: Being Able to Travel Anywhere Instantly Having the Largest Social Media Following in the World Being the Reigning Monarch of a Medium-Sized But Wealthy Country Winning a Five Hundred Million Dollar PowerBall. The option I chose was near the top of the list, and I knew it was my choice before I even read the others. Pick Any Age to Be Forever. The age part wasn’t so important. Twenty-five had been nice. Forty had redeeming moments. This age I am now, I have no quarrel with. No, the part that was important was “forever.” If I could be immortal and still a decent human being, like a fasting vampire then I could make all the choices. I could go back to school at 87 to study architecture and then again at 142 to become a classical musician and 309 to finally master quadratic equations. I could watch nations rise and fall and rise again. I could live in every country for a year or ten or as long as I want. I could actually read every book on my shelf. I could tango in Buenos Aires, can can in Paris, flamenco in Barcelona. Vampires live such interesting lives. I would take a version of that, less tartare. But it was just a meme, and selecting one wish from a list doesn’t make it come true, so my options are limited. My fresh starts aren’t infinite. The choices I’ve already made came with consequences. I can’t live long enough to ease the remorse of poor decisions or learn to avoid them altogether (a lesson obviously requiring a longer curriculum than one human life). If I could live forever, I might learn how to love you, clear and clean, an endless supply without condition or renewal fees to not ever leave you behind or alone or aghast to hold on as if this was our one chance. Instead, as it is, my choices have sometimes driven a stake through your heart. And mine. I won’t live long enough to learn how to make them right. I may not even ever know I needed to try. The immortal hope - living through to perfection. The only mortal one - faulty, messy, honest love. © 2020 Deborah E. Moore, All Rights Reserved
Civility War
It’s an evil snake that crawls between us and takes up the space we didn’t know existed, that turns you left, me right, with our guns pointed at him, at it, at each other. It’s a vicious smoke that rises into our nostrils, fills our lungs with free-based gratification, makes us high on self-righteousness. We exhale noxious fumes into faces we say we love. It’s a vile ideology that turns us on each other, makes an up seem down, makes a fall seem elevating, sends us packing, locked and loaded brother on brother, sister on sister. Haven’t we been here? Haven’t we turned on each other before? Haven’t we gassed and lynched and nailed to crosses those we decided to hate? Is this a never- ending war we’ve all agreed to wage? And now I feel the snake against my skin, the toke in my lungs, the rhetoric in my brain like pinballs of sound bites, and I wonder if doing justice and loving mercy can ever be simultaneous acts. It’s one thing to agree not to spit on your brother. It’s another altogether to agree not to spit on the one who spits on your brother. It’s yet another still to balance the world on your back while you learn to walk humbly with your god. © 2020 Deborah E. Moore, All Rights Reserved
To White Men
(On the occasion of the 2020 Vice-Presidential Debate between Kamala Harris and Mike Pence) I don’t hate you. My father was one of you. He, with his tense jaw and strong grasp meant for affection but delivered in pain. He whose presence commanded attention when he spoke. Though I had six more years of education, two degrees more, I listened patiently when he explained the themes of Thoreau’s writing. Me, expressionless, when he persisted in pronouncing it THOR-ee-o. Me, silent, waiting until my next class to unload the corrections on unsuspecting sophomores. He, who threw the blinker light of his motorcycle against the back wall of the garage in rage when it broke from the bike he had instructed me to hold while he retrieved his forgotten wallet. Me, 10 years small, not quite made to kickstand a Kawasaki. Me, watching in terror as the center of gravity shifted away from my spindly arms. Me, watching it fall, the bike and his anger, with a rush of hot wind. Me, wanting to say, “you’re the Einstein who thought 65 pounds could hold 400 at center,” but I would never dare. Wouldn’t even admit I was thinking it for at least two decades. He, whose anger was quick and sharp, but his raised backhand never landed, only threatened. That was enough. He, the one who told first-grade me to tell those sixth-grade boys that my daddy was as big as King Kong and they better leave me alone, but he could have just been on time to pick me up instead. And you, who look so much like him, wearing your assistant managership like a crown, interrupting me when I’m speaking, as if I was never speaking. You, who have never moved through your world afraid, always afraid. You, claiming you see women as equal because you have no comprehension of the depth of your ignorance. You, holding a toothpick and lecturing a druidic priestess on forestry. You, the one not forced to smile, the writer of rules not the follower, the interrupter and talkoverer and ignorer of anything not you. I don’t hate you. To hate you, I would have to start with him, and I love him. Like a beaten dog still needing to eat, I love him. I don’t have to love you (thank god), but I am able to not hate you. Because of him. In spite of yourselves. You and him. © 2020 Deborah E. Moore, All Rights Reserved