Election

AYMAR MARIÑO MAZA (M.Arch II ’17)

Editors note: _The author_ submitted the following to the Coordinating Editors of Paprika in the wake of the recent Presidental election.

Not one but a series of elections,

a story of human reason, with or without it.

Hidden under skin, under ground, under standings.

Like beauty, deforming as diseases form,

a blurring distance shrouded the change.

Like termites quietly, patiently filling a wall,

they pour now into my house.

Sped up, censored and exposed in bursts,

fear becomes quarantine.

From ships to institutions to walls

to ignoring news reports.

Separate but equal, separate

but mice still cross walls.

(The media lies about mice. Mice hate cheese,

but my TV shows only trap with cheese.)

I have not witnessed an event,

those flicker, die, and get reprinted.

I will not look back in disbelief,

lack of knowledge swathed in belief.

I have witnessed a symptom.

Not lonely, just the one I was told about.

Across TV static, dying men mirror me,

yet not even in death do I see the reflection.

Death is casual, like an event.

The memory of illness lingers,

to fill out the thick and leave

scars for comforting memories.