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My father was a composer.      He, like many other “intellectual rats,” was one of the first ones out in the streets protesting for my rights,

before protesting itself was eventually made illegal. 

   

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The regime found efficient ways to dispense with this clamorous lot. First my father lost his job, and then when he spoke out – even louder this time on live television – someone spotted him on TV.

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Came the flurry of death threats.

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Came the not-so-discreet invitations to find a new country if he didn’t like this one.

 

Then one day came a truck.

 

I’m told he died instantly kissing its bumper, though I suspect this was one of the surgeon’s white lies to offer me some semblance of comfort as a bawling, newly fatherless child.

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Soon after that incident, the National Youth Civil Servitude Act was passed, retroactively making all citizens aged 5-15 automatic property of the US military.

 

Children who weren’t originally born here –

more aptly, children perceived as not having been born here -

were immediately shipped overseas for undisclosed “duty”.

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Children of the rich were initially spared—anyone whose parents could afford the extravagant Patriot Fee for building up the borders.

 

When the poor came for them too though, the law was quickly remedied.

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Such madness seems implausible even now, surveying its wreckage.

 

That’s exactly what the majority who stood by and let it happen thought, too.

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            No one ever believes that things can get so bad until they do.

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They never believe they can get even worse than that, until they do.

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By then, it’s always too late.

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