Election Season
Mackenzie Whitehead-Bust
It is always desire
that we both desire.
We sit in a parked car.
This is our lot,
but it could be any lot.
We do not drive until
there is a destination.
It is 10 pm on a Tuesday,
election season,
and we have just begun
the process
of learning each other’s
ugliest tendencies—
and, thus,
becoming in love.
For purposes of expediency
we compromise and cheer ourselves up
with sex and an hour of dumb YouTube.
Something is moving through.
Something is moving through.
I have consumed not a drop of water.
All day I idle.
There is a longing, and beneath it,
a deeper, more prolonged longing.
The first is easier to deal with,
and so we make toast and eggs,
with yolk cooked perfectly.
We let it drip onto our fingers,
feel satisfied,
fill out our ballots for the illusion
of choice, of impact on future.
Up There, your father, who is a pastor,
says there is somebody who is deciding.
I plead in the ways I know how.
Something is moving through.
Something is moving through.
While playing zombies for the thousandth time,
your housemate says to the other men
Bro, you know that feeling
when you don’t feel anything,
and sex doesn’t feel good anymore?
Men always joke
when what they mean to say is:
am I normal, or do I need help?
We work in fits and starts,
in fits and starts, we move on through.
I present my feminist manifesto to my therapist
and she says is it really that bad
to pretend you’re having an ok time
if you’re having an ok time,
which, I admit, was radically honest
but too much for me to consider
at the time.
At the time, I turn 21.
I don’t invite anyone to my birthday party
directly,
so that my friends have to
prove themselves to me,
which they do
exceedingly, painfully well.
You say that at this point
you are apathetic to the possibility
that everything
down to the last
blade of grass
could change, at any moment
and with no warning.
I agree, though I have decided
that my main fear
is that it already happened,
and we haven’t been looking
at what we thought we were looking at
for many months now.
And, when we bike
through the cemetery at dusk
and the stranger yells
No—
pleads—
Stop!
People’s ancestors
have laid their heads to rest
right there,
right there,
really she is saying
please respect the rules
that remain
unbreakable,
such as:
do not disrespect graves,
and always say thank you,
and there is a cost for everything,
and desire, like energy,
cannot be created nor destroyed.
