We might go to war with my country. My real country. Yes, the one they tell me to go back to. If you don’t like it here then go. I don’t go. I became a citizen at 23 so it’s been only 19 year of having this country. Both halves of my hyphen have hated each other since the beginning of time. I can still pick sides though.

We might go to war with my country and my worry today is hoping the rent check doesn’t bounce, praying for the courage to check my balance for the first time in weeks.

On Twitter, we make jokes about Dr Phil’s house which is really his son’s and it is like the horrorshow a disgustingly wealthy leader of a dying country would have. Rose McGowan is saying something about Iran but we don’t know what, only that we wish she’d stop. On some TV show a young designer was told his design would never do for Karlie Kloss and he doesn’t miss a beat: “not even for dinner with the Kushners?” On TikTok white teenage girls mug cheesily with gun fingers grinding as they lip sync renegade renegade renegade, while cops on duty try to make memes out of arresting people all to Doja bops.

It’s raining hard in New York City and I want to be in it. Last night before I went to bed I emailed my dozen or so Iranian journalist friends, the ones I have monthly dinners with, and told them it is time to schedule the January meet-up and they agreed. I think about my Iranian-Canadian friend who had tea at my house last month and who moved to Tehran two weeks ago, because it was better there, she said, a one-way ticket and she never wants to go back. I wonder when times are like this why the first thing on my mind is how badly I want to go back and for good. If you don’t like it here then go. But I never go.

We might go to war with my country and I may have an essay for it is the best I can tell the editors though I don’t though I do, do I, well, I have a whole book coming out this spring, Brown Album, all about this, and if you would only preorder I can have a chance at more books but never the rent. We might go to war with my country and it was a tick here in America that killed me like this, left me alive dead to live out my days like a zombie pretending to be human, and all I can think is what it cost me.

We might go to war with my country and if we do we will be safe but tell that to the shrieking white people online who believe they and not the thousands of my people will pay for this. They think World War III will happen but they forget it has been happening all this time for another great portion of the world.

In America our president is our commander in chief. In Iran we have a whole other wing for that, we’ve had to protect ourselves for so long.

We might go to war with my country and so on Instagram I put up beautiful paintings of modern renditions of Farsi calligraphy. I imagine this is all I will post for some time. What is there to say, what selfie could make sense, here we go again.