Poetry by Kaleigh Walter

       Nicholas Erwin CC




American Blood, November 6, 2024

I hate myself for hoping. Not for forgetting because that day 
lives in my marrow—for eight years, it sucked at my youth and stole 
my last drops of sanity—but for hoping that my country 
doesn’t hate women more than it loves freedom. For hoping the
Christian values they tout like crowns would weigh down their heads 
long enough to see their neighbor in the gutter. I am ruined 
for hope. My existence was built on unprecedented times. How can I 
work as bombs drop on refugee camps? How can I trust progress when 
the news yawns at felonies? How can I put my arms around supreme deities 
in long black robes that will decide the last of my civil liberties, that may 

judge how long my heart beats? How can I look my father in the eye 
knowing he cares more about a carton of eggs than 
the cracked flesh that could waterfall from my womb 
into the bathtub drain? Would he feel differently, watching me grow 
as still as Amber or Candi or Josseli or Nevaeh—our skin the texture 
of clay? No longer animated with the ability to create life 
but assassinated by men in suits and red ties who would toss white 
flowers on our coffins to the tune of camera flashes before 
turning to younger models they can still smuggle onto private jets and 

over borders where healthcare is still a human right? How am I 
supposed to hug my midwestern mother when she cares more about the 
southern border than children being dissected in their classrooms
by American bullets? She texts me: I don’t know what to
believe. Sad. Then says she wants grandchildren, when she did not cry
for Sandy Hook or Parkland. Would she think life is unfair
if it was her blood’s blood on the floor, pooling next to
the spilled milk—white leeching into red but their lips are blue, mouths 
open, lives traded for better gas prices and corporate tax cuts?

You’re right, Mom and Dad, this is the American Dream 
you promised me when I was two years old. You sang me to sleep 
with the oaths of the declaration—my life for your pursuit 
of happiness. Congratulations—you won. I no longer hope. I no longer 
feel. Today, I am terror and despair and disgust. I am the future 
you trafficked for retirement ease. I am the woman you bound 

with your traditional family beliefs so you can walk the red velvet 
of moral victory. But the carpet is wet and your footprints 
are rubies—you think they are riches, but someday, you will look 
left and right and realize you were holding the knife 
in this murder scene. You are as guilty 
as your president and the blood on your knuckles is mine.



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Kaleigh Walter is a poet, prose writer, and nonprofit fundraiser living in Minneapolis. She holds an MFA from Concordia University, St. Paul, and she is working on her first novel. Her work is featured or forthcoming in West Trestle Review, Book of Matches, Firewords, and on the blogging collective, Poverty House.
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