I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

by Marisa Crane

We held each other’s hands tightly. The same hands we sometimes dropped in public when we felt unsafe—we had that privilege unlike so many others; whiteness meant we could remove our otherness like a sweater if we wanted. We could walk five feet apart and temporarily become gal pals.

I told you I wanted to live in a world in which the antidote to shame is not honor, but honesty.

Had she been paying attention, she would have known it hadn’t happened overnight, that it took a million tiny stabs to bleed democracy dry.

Like so many in power before him, President Colestein is an expert at tapping into this country’s shared anxiety, at using it to fuel mass delusion. That’s why the term limit was scrapped after President Colestein’s second, why he was voted back in for a fourth.