January 20, 2017

Dear Mr. Franklin,

I have passed the day in so much pain that I have not blinked my eyes. What more tragedy can my heart endure? I received the favor of your letter upon the disfavor of this morning’s inauguration and at the same hour, received from your fine Post Office Department this letter from my dear Ayesha:

“Dear Tom,

When in the course of inhuman events, it becomes necessary for one woman to dissolve the emotional bond which has connected her with another and to assume among the conscious of the earth, the principled and separate station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God implore her, a decent respect to the opinions of her boyfriend require that she should declare the causes which compel her to that separation…”

It seems I was born to lose everything that I love. She has adopted my words while abandoning my heart. She proceeded with a list of offenses, committed by our countrymen and assigned in part to my errant design. How was I to foretell the orange cloud of despair that has descended upon our nation’s capital and upon my maiden’s heart? Was my eloquence not a call for national competence? In the place of “self-evident” should I have scribed “fucking obvious” to best ensure equality and access to the morning after pill?

With several drafts of response discarded, I fear that my words may never again capture her attention or affection. My pen is want of wisdom and ink, and as you profess with your ever discerning eye, a man cannot hack his way into a woman’s heart. Though I am now quite good at facebook stalking. At present she is marching with friends, wearing a pink bonnet and a device to protect her genitalia.  

If there is again to be union and harmony, I have seen enough of this life to know it will be a difficult climb. And when clambering a mountain, we always hope the hill we are on is the last. But it is the next, and the next, and still the next, and so perhaps you are right. Perhaps, we would be wise to find more than one path to our mountaintop. Can we as of yet hack our way forward through time? Or reach such mountaintop with a RTF5 Hexacopter drone?

Now despondent and alone, I am as ever your humble and obedient servant,

Thomas Jefferson