I'm scared: a poem

You offered me pears
I wanted to be polite
You wanted to be kind
I accepted but with strings
Attached to angles and distance 
Six feet
And I just want to be safe

But I don’t feel safe in your lair
The long driveway
The sun disappearing into cornfields

You share that your wife has summer bronchitis
Oh no. You’re sure it’s not COVID?
No, no. Of course not. COVI[S] isn’t real. You’re checking the news 
The numbers.

You don’t notice
My steps back
My tightrope walk between etiquette and death’s door
You buzz your lips and saliva sprays indiscriminately

I wonder what it takes to believe reality
You see we don’t see eye to eye
So you say with a chuckle: you won’t chase me off your property
With your two shotguns

Two shotguns?
That’s oddly specific
Are you picturing them now?
Pointed at me
Does it take two shotguns to kill?
I hadn’t thought you’d chase me off
But now I do

There’s no such thing as democratic socialism, you say
I disagree
And you tell me I’m allowed
This is America.
I hadn’t thought I wasn’t allowed
But now I do
Two shotguns

We can share America if I’m not a socialist
If I leave my politics in Seattle
If I don’t complain about this land of the free
Otherwise this is not the place for me

Since when did you appoint yourself king?

Oh yes. How could I forget?
Since the bell’s first ring

Yet I’m the entitled one
The intolerant one
The liberal elite

Because I learned words you can’t pronounce
And ideas you can’t control
Because my feet sprint to the city
In fear of your bullets
And I don’t think you have the right to tell me whether I can share America

I dreamt that you reelected Donald Trump
That he becomes the dictator of his dreams 
A strongman supported by generations of hierarchy
Covering lies
Upon lies
Upon lies

He says you might be canceled
If you don’t cancel first
So goodbye free speech
Goodbye critique
He chases those you fear
With his two 
Now three
Branches of government
And you think he won’t come for you

But your dignity was the first to go