This afternoon I keep thinking of another, one spent walking the halls of my high school, a loop, one big circle, walking laps, seeing people I barely knew but had seen around for a decade crying in public, walking in all these circles and honestly thank the gods I didn’t have a cell phone with the internet then because maybe then my thoughts were just a little quieter in my panic, walking laps, being afraid, feeling some vast wound in my country, knowing that violence was coming but not when or where or from whom, knowing that this violence would beget more, and that wherever there is the sting of mortal fear there are some wicked men to harness it, and September 11th was maybe the last time I prayed to a judeo-christian god I never believed in much but in that moment I was trying, and last night I lit a candle and set out a glass of water and I wrapped a tarot card in string but that wasn’t enough and all my enthusiastic begging for participation in the democratic process was not enough and I was not enough to stop this and how could I because I am so small and I am remembering buildings falling and I remember knowing we were in a time of war that would perhaps not be called war but would take a war’s toll and when my mother was born internment camps had only be gone for a year and a half and I can’t remember what I was thinking two minutes ago but I keep expecting my country to remember its history and I don’t know what to do anymore, I don’t.