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I’m an American
A witness set forth, with chorus, in the manner of tragic remembrance
The First Beckoning — Before the Waking
O lend thine ear, thou latter age of men,
For here is set a mirror to thy visage frail.
No fable forged, nor prophecy wild-cried,
But memory weighed, and warning dearly bought.
Attend, and judge not haste nor tone too sharp,
For cities fall whilst wiser counsel sleeps.
There lieth a name the rolling years refuse to bury,
Though towers crumble and dates forget their bones.
Not queen nor conqueror earned it thus,
But she who loved her folk more than soft peace’s promise.
The First Unveiling — The Waking
I woke the way prophets wake—
not startled,
but heavy.
As if I had been carrying a country
on my chest
while I slept.
The air felt familiar,
yet wrong.
Like returning to a childhood home
where the walls still stand
but the rooms have been renamed.
I said it out loud,
testing whether it still meant
what it used to mean:
I’m an American.
The words did not break.
But they echoed differently.
The Echo in Shadows
Mark how the word yet doth stand, though sense hath fled;
A name abideth when substance steals away.
So doth a crown outlive the rightful head,
And titles linger when verity is gone.
AMENDMENT I
Speech was breath.
Religion was conscience.
The press was irritating and necessary.
Assembly was how truth learned to walk.
Petition was how the small spoke to the large.
We argued loudly
because we trusted the argument
more than the ruler.
— The Echo in Shadows:
O blessed clamour of dispute freely held,
Where tongues contend and none are clapped in irons.
AMENDMENT II
Arms were not about violence—
they were about balance.
A reminder that force belonged to the people first,
and only loaned upward.
— The Echo in Shadows:
Puissance remembereth well who holdeth it last.
AMENDMENT III
Power was not allowed to live inside our walls.
The state stayed outside the door.
— The Echo in Shadows:
For tyranny first seeketh a bed wherein to sleep.
AMENDMENT IV
Our homes were sovereign.
Our papers extensions of the soul.
Suspicion required cause.
Cause required proof.
— The Echo in Shadows:
Search not the house, lest thine own house be searched.
AMENDMENT V
Silence was dignity.
Property was permanence.
The state could not destroy you
and call it procedure.
AMENDMENT VI
Justice had a face.
A name.
A clock that could not be stalled indefinitely.
AMENDMENT VII
Peers judged peers.
Not algorithms.
Not panels.
Not reputations.
AMENDMENT VIII
Punishment was restrained
because cruelty corrodes authority.
AMENDMENT IX
Rights did not end
where imagination failed.
AMENDMENT X
Power was scattered
so no one could gather it all.
We were flawed—
but restrained.
And restraint is the heartbeat of freedom.
The Echo in Shadows
Thus stood the frame: imperfect, yet upright.
Not pure, but bound by law and mutual fear.
Bethink her name when freedoms feel secure,
For safety was the hour she was ignored.
It didn’t collapse.
It transitioned.
That word was everywhere.
Gradually, rights became conditional:
• speech allowed unless destabilizing
• privacy allowed unless inconvenient
• ownership allowed unless inefficient
The pocket device became the new border.
Your thoughts passed through it.
Your money slept in it.
Your location confessed through it.
We were told:
This is modernization.
This is security.
This is sustainability.
The Echo in Shadows
Soft words, soft hands, soft chains unseen,
Thus solace lulleth the watchful into sleep.
THE CUNNING CONTRIVANCE (WHAT IT WAS, NOT WHAT IT WAS NAMED)
Cunning contrivance s were not secret conspiracies—
they were charted blueprints of dominion.
They shared traits:
• centralization of decision-making
• preference for managed populations over independent ones
• replacement of ownership with access
• redefinition of citizenship as participation, not authority
In their design, the world seemed ordered,
metrics, concord, equity, outcomes.
Land, labour, and movement
were but variables to be tended.
Another design spoke of nation’s remaking—
loyalty, efficiency, consolidation of command.
It viewed old institutions
as impediments to alignment.
Different tongue.
Same pull upon the world.
And hovering above both
was a thought now widely welcomed:
Thou need’st not own
if the system provide.
Thou need’st not privacy
if the shelter thereof protects.
Thou need’st not choice
if that which is decreed sufficeth.
The Echo in Shadows
Thus was the covenant struck without a vote:
Give up the key, and thou shalt not be cold.
I had seen this before—
not in detail,
but in pattern.
I saw treaties signed with Indigenous nations,
then reinterpreted,
then ignored—
all legally.
I saw populations categorized,
then managed,
then removed—
step by step,
with paperwork leading the way.
I saw how people were convinced
that compliance was kindness,
that silence was safety,
that survival required obedience.
Not with shouting.
With reassurance.
The machinery always sounded reasonable
until it reached the throat.
The Echo in Shadows (remembering her)
So warned Cassandra, daughter of ancient Troy,
Ere our clocks had learnt the craft of counting hours.
She loved her city more than gentle peace,
And paid for foresight with disbelief profound.
They weighed her tone, not truth; her sex, not sense.
They called the warning peril to their joy.
The horse was welcomed. Night did all the rest.
Remember this: the curse was not simple sight—
But seeing first, and being last believed.
AMENDMENT XIII–XV
Freedom existed—
but not equally.
Citizenship was real—
but stratified.
AMENDMENT XIX, XXIV, XXVI
The vote existed—
but trust did not.
When belief in the process eroded,
power no longer needed to steal elections.
People surrendered them voluntarily
out of exhaustion.
AMENDMENT XXII
Limits on power felt quaint
in an age of permanent emergency.
AMENDMENT XIV
Equal protection survived as a phrase
long after it stopped functioning as a practice.
And property—
the old anchor of liberty—
became unstable.
Homes were leased.
Labor was gigged.
Money was abstracted.
Movement was conditional.
You owned nothing outright—
and were told happiness would follow.
It didn’t.
The Echo in Shadows
Her punishment was not the fall she foresaw,
But living long enough to watch it rise.
Each age selecteth its Cassandras anew;
The names may change—disbelief abideth still.
So I ask—
as someone who lived through it:
When rights become optional,
are they still rights?
When ownership is replaced with permission,
who holds the leash?
When the system promises care
in exchange for autonomy,
is refusal still allowed?
Should we care—
or is caring itself now
an act of defiance?
And if freedom is lost
not in chains
but in comfort…
What would it take
to want it back?
Not can we—
but will we?
I woke with that question
burning behind my eyes.
I’m an American.
And I don’t know
what we will choose next.
Now what?
Final Echo
The gate yet stands. The hour yet breathes.
No oracle remains but living choice.
Remember her. Remember what was lost.
Speak now—or let the silence speak for thee.
Author’s Note
This poem is an original work of creative expression.
It draws upon history, memory, and widely known civic principles—particularly those embedded in the United States Constitution and in classical literature—but all language, structure, imagery, and interpretation are my own.
References to historical events, cultural patterns, or governing frameworks are made in a poetic and reflective manner, not as quotation, reproduction, or representation of any single document, institution, or author. Any resemblance to real policies, philosophies, or historical moments arises from shared public knowledge and the enduring patterns of human governance, not from borrowed text.
This work does not claim authority beyond witness.
It does not instruct; it remembers.
It does not accuse; it asks.
If it unsettles, that is not because it repeats another’s words,
but because it speaks in its own.
— The Author
Marguerite Grace
verse, possies, sonnets, and short stories 