War In A Paperweight

1/16/26 2:22pm

The season is somehow closing and only halfway through and I wonder how much longer we’ve got to endure this war before it’s time to hang up our garments and down a pitcher of billion dollar oil and everyone I know is posting the same videos of women and children being killed by faceless agents but at least I’ve got some syntax to sip and swallow and a simile that slides down like an IV drip in a senior citizen who wanders around an artisanal historical museum with newly plated directional signs mounted just for him because it’s easier to make this one last than to do anything profound or worth writing in a historical script but don’t even worry about it because they’ll pass another law to recount every murder a victory and wouldn’t you like to look back on all these gourds half-squashed and half-witted? It’s all halves it seems and maybe that’s all there is for now but I like to think that sometime it’ll make a whole and maybe it looks a little different than we thought but it’ll have a nice weight to it and the neighbors will keep their windows open when the breeze picks up and we won’t be scared to travel or walk alone or drive next to an unmarked vehicle and maybe it looks like time lost but at least the future is full of seasons that bring more than flurries of hate and maybe it’ll even give everyone a face and a name and somewhere to place the rage that has been slowly coursing through our arms and legs for nearly a (admittedly non chronological) decade and maybe it’s going to be twisted and torn apart like vegetables from their roots but maybe that’s the price we have to pay for a little bit of peace. Half a handful of peace is worth a lot these days. Let’s put ours together.

— ODH