Moccasin Millennial

“With each wing beat drumming against me—insistent, rhythmic—the falconer worked at the hood, her talons locking tighter into my knucklebone…”

“I call my father and choke on air, feel the drag of my skeleton as it rattles for breath, until I whisper daddy, he is nothing but bones…”

“Above us, an eagle lurches, two sparrows locked in its talons. For a second, it comforts you, until your stomach sinks with realization: We are the sparrows.”

“Two pills, taken each day at exactly the same time, usually with food—they are the great deciders of your physical movements, of living a day unattended by pain or gritting your teeth in spite of it.”

“Then, something in him switches. You don’t detect it at first, not tangibly—suddenly he is looking at you, really looking…”

“By inauguration day, your laugh is weak with relief. With all this happening now, I think I left at the right time. If nothing else, it got the wolf off my back.”

“In one hundred days, you could reward one hundred students with visas for an education, or you could swipe them away, instead.”

“The killing wound was easy to spot—the point of an incisor dipped into the hollow scoop of a bite…”

“You will try to hold out your culture as a shield, until they excavate what little you offer in the landscape of your hands.”