I'll See Myself Out, Thanks

‘getting out before inauguration’
‘you’re our hero’
‘heroes stay and fight’

The train announcements switch from English first to French and it feels like there's a spore stuck in my bronchial tube so I think back a few days to the Traverse City airport lounge and who I can blame for getting me sick: flannel shirt guy, sandwich on his chest; conference call on speaker dude yelling about deliverables and pacing the aisles to make sure we can all hear him and breathe his air; couple in pajamas putting used diapers on the seats next to them; lady watching something with a laugh track on her phone, mouth open, sucking snot up into her nasal cavity with an expression like she’s surprised but afraid if she relaxes her face she'll die.

I’ve been stuffing the bins in the alley behind my building like I’m trying to lighten the load on a sinking boat, or fleeing a fire or a hurricane and I’m the only one in town who’s seen the weather reports, or I can feel the storm in my artificial eardrum and no one believes me, or I’m the weird loner loading up his pickup and everyone laughs as he drives out of town right when the aliens show up.

Clothes, gadgets, dishware, hand soap, books I forgot to read. The Subaru died in the freezing rain on the way back from Detroit. Loyal but too shy or proud to tell me its time was up. That apartment was full of found art including one of the worst paintings I’ve ever seen. Frames still filled with stock photos. Road maps to cover up nail holes and furniture I hauled in from the alley behind the psychiatrist’s office when one of them moved out. Back in the ecosystem via Goodwill.

My luggage is this bloated green boxy thing like a soft shelled steamer trunk and six pounds over the limit. I stand it on the scale and pull its contents out. Au revoir bulky jacket and cheap cardigans I only ever imagined wearing. Shedding plumage. The airline attendant is patient. Happens all the time, y’know you could just wear them through security and I say sounds like a Madea movie I’m cool I don’t need most of this anyway, and I say can you give them to charity and I wonder if she took my crappy clothes home to her family because she’s probably paid in spit for working here.

When anyone asks me why I say it's because my favorite local ice cream family put a big Maga sign on their barn, and I just need to get out of here for a while, maybe forever, and if I can say anything about my activism these last few years it's that I never went to that flower shop with the yellow painted bricks because they let Jack Bergman do a campaign ad there and he’s a traitor who doesn't live in Michigan and claims property on an unincorporated island in Lake Superior and by that logic he’s about as qualified as a moose. Oh and I registered as a Jacobin Communist when I signed up to be a poll worker during the midterms and I helped the local Democrats even though I don’t trust them or enjoy their company and I used to help lawyers sue debt collectors but like I tell the lady next to me at the Toronto train station, mostly I'm just happy to go where most of the folks around me didn’t vote for Trump.

But it's also that I don’t trust my own mouth, and the way I call people Republic***s and C***servatives and throw my hands up when they cut me off with their cars when I’m out walking which I do to calm down, and I actually think seeing someone walking on purpose enrages some of these guys, ol’ boys who remove the mufflers on their trucks so they can make as much noise as possible and whose greatest and maybe only joy in life is to make everyone else as miserable as they are, and sure, I don’t want to look at my weed-addled neighbor’s black flags or ‘in this house whatever you believe makes us mad’ signs and now these are the assholes in charge, so yeah it’s political and I guess there's some fear of drowning in madness, but disgust has a purpose and sometimes a thing tastes bad because one of your ancestors discovered if you put it in your mouth your intestines fall out.

At Toronto Pearson a border agent who looks like he just got served divorce papers glances at my customs receipt and tells me I'm free to go. Nothing to declare but my cowardice. He's clearly too busy to laugh.