American Holiday 106 Ellaina Powers The pumpkins on the porch are rotting faster than me and I envy them. Their roots failed them months ago and mine, decades. Because in school they make us memorize all the presidents and hope we forget where we came from, how we lived before a revolution full of soda pop and guns and trains. Coke tastes good but it’s hard to swallow with broken teeth. And on Halloween they let us walk house to House, believing we are the heroes in our own narrative; bruised knuckles rapping on the door of our future while the monsters in suits behind it hiss and shriek, dangling everything sweet on a thread just a little too high to reach. Trick or treat, dance and sweat and bleed for the rest of your life, there was nothing good for us here anyway, and anything that was is now soaked through with rainbow water that burns going down the throat and forces us to bury the dog six years early. We carve pumpkins anyway, and the TV is on in the background playing reruns of Chernobyl and I wonder where that one guy got his mask, because I’m gonna ask for one for Christmas if the snow doesn’t tear through our roof before Santa can make another deal with The Big Guys.