#title The State Is Not My Lover
#author Coraline James Seksinsky
#SORTauthors Coraline James Seksinsky;
#date 2025
#source [[https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/417-winter-2025/the-state-is-not-my-lover]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2026-02-22
#notes Fifth Estate #417, Winter 2025


<quote>
if it dies I will not shed a tear.
</quote>

<quote>
I don’t really know her or what she
</quote>

wants from me,

<quote>
the men who made her, or how I’m
</quote>

supposed to live here-

<quote>
sweltering in a chaos
</quote>

<quote>
that ain’t for my
</quote>

<quote>
sake.
</quote>

Unwilling as I am to bear the responsibility

of accumulated force.

.

<quote>
Collective destiny can only be spread
</quote>

so thin.

Before I reach for the knife-

<quote>
To cut off the other twisted wing
</quote>

and plummet

<quote>
all the way back to the sweet earth.
</quote>

.

They’re flying us somewhere

and I did not elect to go right into the mad eye of

<quote>
the sun
</quote>

.

In The State my momma don’t love me-

<quote>
I am never enough
</quote>

Laying down looking at the clouds

<quote>
certain of my calculus that to survive
</quote>

here would

<quote>
cost me bails of my dignity
</quote>

an amount of my humanity that I could not do to expel

Coraline James Seksinsky is a musician, writer, and begrudging worker who’s lived the vast majority of her life in Cheshire County, New Hampshire. Currently, she resides in middle Tennessee with her boyfriend in an old farmhouse.