Infinite Country

by Patricia Engel

People say drugs and alcohol are the greatest and most persuasive narcotics—the elements most likely to ruin a life. They’re wrong. It’s love.

What was it about this country that kept everyone hostage to its fantasy? The previous month, on its own soil, an American man went to his job at a plant and gunned down fourteen coworkers, and last spring alone there were four different school shootings. A nation at war with itself, yet people still spoke of it as some kind of paradise.

I figured Talia would eventually learn there is no place that can turn a person suicidal with the quickness of a North American suburb.

Her father said the death of a loved one was like a house on fire. Even with everything intact, it still felt like mere ashes.

Emigration was a peeling away of the skin. An undoing. You wake each morning and forget where you are, who you are, and when the world outside shows you your reflection, it’s ugly and distorted; you’ve become a scorned, unwanted creature.

And maybe there is no nation or citizenry; they’re just territories mapped in place of family, in place of love, the infinite country.