Listening to the news, she sits on the edge of the couch, hunched over her knees with her elbows pressing firmly into the tops of her thighs. She had been on a fast for a while, a decision to remove herself from the onslaught of constant updates from the political world where nothing good was happening. But today is different: today is the inauguration of the newly elected leader. The new-old leader. The one who shifts rhetoric, blame, and truth to fit within the narrative that he wants to tell. She has the volume on mute because she doesn’t want to hear what he has to say, biting down on her bottom lip as she watches the smug looks upon the faces of the old, fat, white men with gray hair. The ones who want this. The ones who made the last four years out to be a complete mess with only the other party to blame. 

She slows her breathing and picks up the beer she set on the ground next to her feet. Tears begin to form in her eyes, the fragility of the political structure determined by the media outlets that would rather spread their opinions, painting them as facts, than report on what is happening. And somehow we’re all drinking from the poison challis. Coming to believe what is being fed to us without asking what is real. She curls her toes and stretches them out again, leaning back against the soft green suede, taking a long swig from the cold can. 

The phone rings in the other room. She stops breathing and waits for it to ring again, the heavy thumping against the wall. She stands up and goes to the white corded phone in the kitchen, exhaling with a gruff hello. “Are you watching this? Tell me you’re watching this.” A man’s voice on the other end speaks quickly, raspy into the fading evening. She can almost smell the cigarette smoke from his breath through the line. She nods, as if he can see her, and he continues. “There’s something going on. The protests are building along the front gate of the residence. I didn’t think it was actually going to happen, but it’s happening.” 

Her eyebrows pull down, taut skin, dry from the winter air. “You’re on the wrong channel! Just get down here.” He hangs up, raised voices in the background. She pads back into the living room, the fat faces in shades of white, in spray-tanned orange, gleaming as the cameras zoom in on their eyes. Darting from side to side, she hears nothing but they are breathing in their stale air. Their own egos expanding underneath their shiny suits where tiny American flags are pinned to the lapels. The cameras do not pull out, they change from eyes to eyes of the men who are coming into office. Their power emanating from their bodies, expanding to eat whole the final words of the judge presiding over the transfer of authority, of position. 

The yells are getting louder. She picks up the remote, thinking the volume had come on. But the sound is coming from outside. Filling the streets. She walks to the windows and opens the curtains, masses of bodies moving toward downtown. Toward the event. Toward the building. She turns back to the tv set, the cameras now blurred, a sea of black and blue figures melting together with a dark cloud pulsing in the background. She grabs the remote and turns off the tv, pulling on her boots and zipping up her jacket as the roars from the crowd get louder, pulsing through the building. The street lights are off. The power has been cut. All the lights within the blocks of apartment buildings are flashing. She covers her mouth with her scarf, listening to the din of the people, watching their hands and feet. Clenched fists.

She wonders if there was some assumption that the other side would accept defeat without expressing their voice? Without showing up and demonstrating their discontent. That they weren’t going to stand up for what they believed in. Headlamps flashing red, she turns the corner to see the dark cloud hanging heavy over the residence in the distance. Something must be done. They are there to do it. She pinches herself, wondering if this is a dream, only to feel the tingling, the numbing, the warmth and then the cold flow through her arms.