God help me, I’m in love with a girl. And I hate her, too.

She is the disobedient child of kings and queens, but she went rogue and formed her own life. The kings and queens didn’t expect her to rebel, but she did. She fought back, wanting her own kingdom. And when she fought back, a war ensued. Dogged and determined, she finally won, and declared her independence. Her parents, the kings and queens, lamented her loss. They did not completely disown my love, they deferred to her. Every parent wants their children to be more powerful than her.

Due to her actions and her ambitions, my queen became more powerful than her parents. She wanted freedom, and she gained it; she gained her kingdom. She would do it at any cost. The cost was blood, and she paid it in spades.

I made a trip over the Atlantic, and it was neither my wish nor my dream to meet her. I had no idea where I was going. Many of my brothers and sisters died along the way, but I made it. We could not understand the strange people telling us what to do. One man, one like me, told me we were going to meet her, and he explained.

I saw her original lovers, on a tearful trail. These ex-boyfriends fought back with the ferocity of Mother Nature, but her force was too strong. She had the experience of many conquests, over many endless lands, for as long as time had been recorded. Those exes were eventually vanquished, under the weight of her hate for anything that stifled her dream and her wishes for her own kingdom. They were corralled, and slaughtered, and run to the ends of ocean sides. They, too, were crushed under her love.

She had massive lands that needed tending. So, I met her, and imagined a vast expanse. This land was both desert and forest. It had lakes the size of seas, mountains and beaches. Winds, storms, sun, were all here. There were summers, and winters in the same season, the like which I had never seen. But I did not meet her voluntarily. In fact, I was not allowed to witness most of the beauty I was told of.

I was allowed to witness her brutality. She would stop at nothing.

I was subjugated, and forced to work to the death to satisfy her needs. After what I was told and what was demonstrated, I was given nothing, not even the chance to smell her hair. But I kept working. This went on for countless days, until a Great War arose. Someone had disagreed with my love, and the conflict ensued. It was never really about me, it was an internal conflict. My love, fighting with herself. She had disagreed with herself, but I was the one paying for it.

In the end of this Great War, in which many men’s hearts were broken by her, I was given my freedom from her love. I saw her all around me, and imagined what my family could have in the shadow of her majesty.

A dark time came instead. Her love came for me again, and had no mercy. It was then that I realized that my love had no love for me. She loved what I could give her, but had no inclination to give to me. What else could be my reaction? After generations of being promised something, teased, beaten, and killed in the heart, over and over…what was the proper response? It was a natural progression, correct? Because I had nothing else.

I grew ugly inside, slowly, but that horror would not be realized for generations. If I could just….

Yes! Against all odds, she stood by and watched as I grew my own towns, with my own brethren taking advantage of her beauty. We watched under her loving eye as we grew Tulsa, and Rosewood, and others. There was tension between myself and her, but I still loved her. If our relationship went on long, just like this, our dream would be realized. The dream, mine and hers, and she would be mine forever. Her soldiers had already written the rules. But alas, I was fooled by her murderous treachery once again.

She had sent men in hoods to destroy me. Her soldiers didn’t stop them. Some of them WERE the soldiers. Why? I had served her, and I thought she could love me, now. In the end, I saw ruins again, smoking and bleeding, and the bodies of my own, strewn about, haphazardly.

I went to wars for her. I didn’t go because I thought I was in danger. That felt familiar to me. I marched to get her attention. She seemed to notice, and I smiled. For once, she smiled back. All I wanted was a kiss. I knew I didn’t really belong here, but her songs said she could love anybody, and I believed her.

Time passed, and I moved north. They fought for us in this region during the Great War, so we thought things would be better, and we could get closer to her. Close enough to be loved. But once again, we were tricked. They herded us together, and took away all of her people, to marginalize us again. Her people ran away from us, and took hope of cooperation with them.

She passed laws to house us in different ways. She made us hungry, and desperate. I looked around at my friends, sorry that I lead them to this bleak destiny. There were those that told me I could fix this love affair, but I didn’t believe them anymore. This is one beautiful woman I would never kiss. And the fields and flatlands of the south were replaced by the hopelessly tall concrete prisons of the north, with our children in despair.

And after a long while, I was actually born. In the year of the 200^th birthday of my love. She was 200 years old, and people were on TV, looking like me, and the biggest star in the world was from me, and she loved me! And all of her minions did, too. My brothers and sisters were in the best games in the world, they wanted to wear our shoes! They wanted to love us, and SHE did too! We loved it!

They loved our music, they loved the way we danced and sang. They loved our poetry. Is this finally it? They loved our families on TV. They let us be scientists, and doctors, because they realized we could do school too, without being led inside by her soldiers. But she allowed poison in. She had built a hierarchy, and she needed to fund her secret wars against those that opposed her opinions.

Her profitable poison was everywhere. And we were still poor, and disenfranchised. I went to her and pled my case, but she had another objective. She had enemies that cared nothing about her, or me, or us. But she got paranoid, and again, we suffered. We were still hungry, and we started to kill each other, fighting over the pointless pennies her poison could bring us. This poison caused many deaths, but she wouldn’t stop it. She had goals that were past our existence. She saw another way to fund her madness, and she sold us to prisons this time, and batted not an eyelash. We saw what was happening, but we were powerless to stop it. All we could do was cry. She knew our existence was in her hands, but she once again had higher goals.

We tried to blame ourselves, but it all began one way.

Some of us escaped our love, and made it past the “danger age”, when we would be foolish enough to be fooled by her love and her beauty. We finally came to the reality that her beauty and her lofty proclamations were never for us; all those fantasy-like utopian visions were never for us. I see our young killing each other. Far too many people don’t, or more to the point, won’t understand how insurgents are created. She allows and influences people to believe we got this way on our own. While I watch in horror, she allows her followers to believe that people become like this because that’s simply who they are.

But we still fight for her, because her potential beauty is too much to pass on, and there’s nowhere to go. We don’t remember our names, or where we came from. But she sheds that reality like so much fur. And I’m still here, confused, angry, and conflicted.

I still love her, and I’m undoubtedly stupid. The girl’s name is…you guessed it.

America.