9daysofblue&yellow

February. Twenty twenty-two. I was young. I remember where I was standing, because for about nine days it was the only thing anybody said. Nine days of blue and yellow. Blue and yellow on the buildings downtown. Blue and yellow in everybody's little round picture. Blue and yellow on a cupcake in a bakery window, which I thought was stupid, and bought. Then March. Then April. Then somebody famous got divorced. Then it moved off the front page. Then it moved off the page. Then it became the thing your uncle argues about at Thanksgiving -- a line item, a budget fight, a word politicians say the way you say a chore you haven't done. The flags came down off the profile pictures. Nobody took a vote. They just came down. And it did not stop. It did not stop for the divorce. It did not stop for the election, or the next one. It did not stop when I stopped. There's a kid over there who is four years old. Four. Born in the first month of it. Has never once heard a night that was only night. Thinks a siren is a kind of weather. Somebody has taught that kid which wall is the safe wall the way my mom taught me to look both ways. I don't have a cousin there. I want to be honest about that. I'm not going to stand up here and borrow somebody's grandmother. I have never heard the sound. I have seen the sound -- in a video, at forty percent volume, on my back, in bed, for about eleven seconds. Then I scrolled. Then I ate something. So here's my one wish, and it isn't a good look. I don't wish for peace. Everybody wishes for peace. Peace is free to want. I've wanted it for four years at no cost to me whatsoever. I wish attention lasted as long as war does. I wish my caring had the stamina of artillery. I wish the part of me that lit up in February had a battery in it instead of a news cycle. Because that's the trick, isn't it. They don't have to beat us. They just have to be more patient than our feelings. And we are so, so easy to bore. If the wish came true I'd be somebody still angry on a Tuesday in July, about something far away, with nobody watching me be angry. Because it hasn't, I'm somebody who didn't think about this once all week — until somebody asked me what I wanted. It's going on right now. While I'm saying this. While you're deciding whether you liked it. It's going on right now.