angel lí. capitol. [ 10th gm ]

惩前毖后。
punishing those who come before stops those who come after from doing something.
- sacrificial odes of zhou

they took my mother. i was 7 years old. we took back hundreds more, thousands. still she did not come home. so many lost their mothers, their fathers, their siblings, their children, their lives. entire neighbourhoods flattened - i didn't care. i still do not.

my father put me in the safe room and said wait here, i did. for... (days?) eating tinned pineapple and crying myself to sleep. at 29 i cannot stand the sickly-sweet taste of such frightened, mournful, solitary dispair so i pretend that i'm allergic.

it was over, eventually. my father told me that we had won but there was still an empty seat at our dining table, still that void in my heart. and it's not like my mother wasn't an example of perfect parenting. no kisses on my forehead, no bedtime stories and covers tucked tightly. just praise when i had earned it. and i earned it tenfold.

i did not feel all that robbed of love. (papa had squeezed me tightly before he left me in the safe room. he had kept the door ajar and looked at me, as if he were going to say something - but then turned and locked the door.) i just felt cheated. or rather - i felt that she had been cheated. and that did not sit right with me.

i used to be a track and field kid. finishing up high school running and running and running in circles. i still remember running and running and running home as the bombs lit up the residential areas. i remember people screaming, grabbing at me, limbs half blown off. still i ran, and ran, and ran, and ran, little girl all the way home. mama was gone. into the safe room i go, strands of sour pineapple between my teeth. when i ran i was always back there, smoke plumes chasing me to the finish line.

papa died last year. damage lingering in his blood and bones from whatever they had put in those bombs. it killed him slowly, softly, tenderly - and then savagely, so sudden, so soon. gold medals around my neck and no more parents left to nod approvingly. i want to fill that hollow void with blood and vengeance.

i'm no stranger to propoganda. i see what they fed us, now that i'm older. i understand exactly what they were trying to do when they told us the dirty rebels were responsible for all of our losses. when they parade those sole survivors around and make them look us in the eyes, look at the families of those they had killed. punish them and punish them and punish them again. they cannot outrun this. they cannot hide from what their parents did to our parents did to their children did to ours. but we make them kill their own now, selfish and with nowhere to run. 

nowhere to run. nowhere to run. nowhere to run.

papa and i attended the 8th games. half-whispering, half-wondering in that way he always did, 'we should put this on television.' i heard the cogs in the machine twist and creak and i looked at harlan godfrey with his microphone, his slicked-back hair, his charm and his devilish grin and i smiled.

i ran around and around and around the block, train-tracks taking victors all over panem to stand in front of mourners and bare witness to grief, around and around and around, little girl face to face with what the rebels did to us, around and around and around like a-


like a wheel of film.

then papa got sick and i was by his side and the arena collapsed, they drowned, good riddance, one boy from 4 floating to the surface. the first meeting after his funeral the board sat me down with proposals and i held up a hand to silence them all.

"get harlan godfrey in here. the president, too. we're putting on a show this year in father's honour."

they will never forget what they did to us. what they did to themselves. 

"and..." what was her name? "dr. ezra." (i ignore the gasps.)

i'll make sure of it. papa, mama. 

i'll make sure of it.

兵不厌诈
all's fair in war.
- han feizi