Imagine: A bullet piercing the top of the ear of a former
president in mid-sentence. As it speeds by, it tells him,
It’s almost time, darling. Or does it croon, I want you
the way the stomach wants to digest the moon. Or
perhaps the bullet states, A gift-wrapped box of dirt is still
a gift-wrapped box of dirt. You would have to ask
the bullet to know for certain, but I don’t believe
the bullet has yet been found, and if it is, their lawyer
will tell the bullet not to say a word. Imagine:
The repeated replaying of the shooting. The blood
igniting the face of the former president. His defiantly
raised fist. In the top right corner, a slice of the American
flag, refusing to be anything other than the American flag.
These images fed to us over and over, as if the more
we bathed in them, the more likely we’d be able to
understand something about what had just happened.
Watching it for the fifth or sixth time, I suddenly thought:
The cat litter box. It needs to be cleaned.
And so, that’s what I did.
.
John Bradley
.