I am lying naked, emaciated, on a concrete floor.

I am thinking. It is all I have left.

I am thinking about Michelle Obama’s speech, the one she gave 27 days before she and her husband were executed.

The beauty of that speech. The dignity. The hope it gave me as a woman. As a human.

They managed to repeal the 19th Amendment, and he won.

He immediately set upon imprisoning everyone who didn’t back him.

He started with women, then Mexicans, then gays.

I am all three. I was top of the list.

I memorized her speech. The last tears from my eyes came from those words.

My body is no longer writhing, only waiting for the sweet release of death.

I can still see her eyes, the tremor in her voice, the passion oozing from her heart.

Now I hear a sweet song. Star, my cockatiel, is singing good morning to me.

“Wake up,” he says.

I do. I look at my iPhone. It’s November 8.