Ain’t no patriot ‘less you’re wearing the right shirt, by Antosh Wojcik
The epiphany in the shower was to stop holding onto Sarah’s American clothes. They are American clothes because they were purchased in America and depict patriotism with vigour. But I shouldn’t claim they are American clothes because they were made by people or children in a country that had been bombed by America at some point. The people or children are in conditions in which they make clothes for people who are slow-destroying their home. I don’t know why I differentiate children from people. It must have been strange stitching a depiction of a flag you had never seen into the breast space of a blouse, to know the blouse will be partnered with jeans and ruminated over whether they match, by a woman you will never meet and when decided that they do match, that they are then worn to a bar where they meet another body wrapped in non-descript clothes, another blouse paired with jeans, made by hands from another bombed country, to be pulled off, to the point of ripping the left shoulder, a faulty seam, but no complaints because it must be hard to sew un-faulty after five thousand blouses, which is how many you must make, child. I’m sorry. I pulled at her shoulders with my teeth and undid your work. I am assuming you are child. I am assuming you still sew clothes or have Americans taught you to use machines that print clothes, blouses, in perfect shape You are assuming these clothes succeeded in wrapping someone up. Or you are not. I am no longer. I’ve left them, empty, in an outline of a person or a child, on the floor and plead them to run to me, as if we were being bombed. I made calls for help. Sarah’s still not coming back for her American clothes.