75th Candidate Calliope Bloom [D6]

I only did this to be sane
not for you to know my name

By now the spotlight should feel familiar, but she's never gotten used to it – Aesop's death, the celebrated anniversary of his murder, her best friend… people staring at her in this way means something traumatic has happened. "My name is Calliope Bloom." It isn't until she's at the podium, clutching the edges with sudden chest-wrenching panic and sweat prickling at her hairline that reality sinks in. This had started as a joke when a co-worker got too enthusiastic about her careless ranting and Callie sarcastically agreed that, oh yeah, she should totally run for mayor! "All of you know who I am and I know you too, even though your breakdowns haven't been televised. I used to think we were strangers, with mirrored glass between us so you could see me while I could only see my own distorted reflection, but we've always been the same. My face was yours too."

There is a part of her that really is trying to believe that, even if the rest of her is certain she's just a born politician: a spectacular liar.

"Each of us was was raised with an emphasis on health and science, not history. Our educations were honed and specialized from a young age, many of us becoming medical whiz kids, often at the expense of the kind of knowledge we never know we're missing until it's too late. In this way, we're a District of brilliant idiots, stupid geniuses, and talented failures. The most incredible minds in Panem hail from Six — people capable of restarting hearts, curing gruesome sickness, and making the future brighter for everyone! For everyone except ourselves, it seems.

I am the sister of the infamous Aesop Bloom of the Fifty-Ninth Hunger Games and I've never been able to live my own name down, but at least I've lived and that's quite something because everyone knows Victors don't come from District Six." Sucking in a harsh breath, she pounds both fists on the podium and unleashes a decade and a half of rage in a single breath. "But why the fuck not?! Why does the ability to bring a life back from the edge of death come at the cost of our own survival instincts, our collective self-worth? Why do we value the theory of well-being more than the actuality of it within our own community? Why has the medical District become synonymous with dying young? It's not just my brother Aesop or my friend Galaxy," their names catch in her throat and it's only the momentum of her frustration that carries her through the words that follow, "or everyone who came before and followed after. It's the junkies we pretend aren't falling into madness all around us! It's the shunned factory workers who were born with aptitudes other than science and grew up believing they were worthless because we told them so, told them they were nothing! It's the way none of us are ever good enough, even if we're top of our class and destined for impossible greatness!

Impossible.

That's the word I allowed into my own mind, because that's what I was taught to believe. That's what I was taught to believe by all of you, because my success was bound to be your failure because that's how it has always been here. Because there are no Victors in District Six. Because we do not learn from our mistakes. Because we're all twice as idiotic and half as brilliant as we believe ourselves to be." There is unmistakable sadness in her voice, the kind that comes from endless nights spent wondering if Aesop might have survived if only he'd been allowed to grow up with a little more faith in himself.

"I'm here today because I'm so goddamn tired of it all. There are plenty of people eager to point out that I am young and inexperienced, but they're full of crap. I'm a million years old," like a soldier come home from a gruesome war, like every minute of life has been a decade, "and I have lived life in this District from top to rock bottom. I know what the optimistic moments of success and acceptance feel like just as well as I know the terrible ache of failure and ostracism. I have loved science and understand its importance and beauty, but I've also worked three jobs and sacrificed both sleep and sanity just to scrape by. There has been value in all of it. I believe there can be victory too. For everyone."