I always remember something different
when I think back
Sometimes I can’t trust
what is my recollection
what is the mix edit of the Lightning Crashes song with all of the journalists’ voices
whether I was the one who took the picture of the firefighter with the kid
(I wasn’t)
or if it just worked its way inside me like everyone else
of course it did
Now then
I did see the President when he came, with my mom (my dad didn't like him)
There was this moment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bUinsY4bSA
at 31:57
here recorded for all posterity
but in no way doing justice to how quickly an auditorium of the bereaved and bewildered
shut up and sat down
nor how tall, imposing, larger than life he seemed from the nosebleed section
how you could have picked out the bearer of the free world
from a mile away (which is what it felt like)
Do I get wisted
longing for a simpler time that was obviously never simple
when evil moved into our backyard
when murder found a new address
when justice should be so swift and so severe
when I would be so okay with the FBI doing whatever it needed to do
and to whom
But with such assurance that there are good people
such good people
and many
I did not need the First Lady to say, but I’m glad she did
Not that that’s what she’s remembered for anyway
---------
I always remember something different
Sometimes that it was some A-rab in a hoodie
If you can believe someone would actually throw that out there
And that a news organization anchored by an Ogle brother would run with it
And that there were two of them, and their sketches bandied about
Because if there's one A-rab that wishes us ill
There's gotta be another
and
Whether an A-rab, or a decisively Irish-American ex-military militant who got bullied as a child
I suppose assuming
that there's always another
actually is the one thing we always get right
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