It is the Fourth of July and the flags in the neighborhood look worn, the colors faded after many years of exposure to the elements and attics. People buy potato chips and beer and hotdogs and hamburgers and wine in boxes. People buy hairspray and Maybelline mascara and Old Spice deodorant and condoms. People buy new T-shirts and new barbecue tools and kiss me pink lipgloss. There’s something on television they agree to watch. There is a low-lying sentiment of nostalgia and a high flying feeling of fear. The news reporters look as if they have been spray­painted with varnish. Even CNN has become difficult to watch because the people are moving their lips again. Just like the Wizard of Oz you are supposed to not pay attention to the man behind the curtain. Our country aches and it aches with the pain of fissures in rocks, volcanic eruptions, forked tongues, highways, border walls made of blood sweat and tears.

I am sitting in the almost nighttime of my community, looking out at the green lawn, wondering what will happen in the next year. I am wondering do I have ammo for my shotgun. I love my gun. I don’t love it in the way the bright boys love their guns or men in Texas love their guns. I love it because it’s beautiful and because I am not scared of it anymore.

I’m not certain what to look forward to. I’m not certain what’s right and what’s wrong. I’m not certain that this big green swatch of lawn is actually not spray-painted. Maybe someone put me in a Disney movie and then erased my memory and I am destined to play out the part of Bambi forever.

Yesterday my car hit a deer but then I couldn’t find it.

It is the 4th of July and I’m in the dark sitting on a white bench on the green lawn in a community where I have many friends so what the heck is with this unsettledness I feel?

lucinda Watson