I should’ve known better, which is the first lie we tell ourselves, because knowing better is always a luxury item you can only afford once the damage is already done. I should’ve stayed in the car that morning, windows up, Malibu pretending to be eternal. I should’ve ignored the call, the headline, the familiar last name that always arrives like a weather system: Kennedy. A name that behaves like a verb. To Kennedy, something is to haunt it without touching it.
I could’ve been quieter. I could’ve been louder. I could’ve been someone else entirely, which is the most American fantasy of all—identity as a lane change, no signal required. I could’ve written the book differently, lived the story differently, loved differently. I couldn’t have noticed how history keeps selecting its favorites and then blames the rest of us for not surviving the audition.
Kennedy, again. There he is in my head, not as a man but as a structure—columns, shadows, inherited gravity. A person born already symbolic, already forgiven. I don’t envy him, I tell myself, which is another lie. I envy the way the story bends around certain people, cushioning them, while others—me, for instance—are expected to absorb impact quietly and call it character.
Would’ve is the cruelest tense because it implies consent. I would’ve done this differently if they hadn’t done that. I would’ve loved him better if he hadn’t disappeared into his own mythology. I would’ve been generous if generosity hadn’t been wasted on people who mistook it for weakness. I would’ve told the truth if anyone had actually wanted it.
Everyone says accountability like it’s evenly distributed. It isn’t. Some people are born into apology-proof glass. Others are born into footnotes. I am the latter, obviously. I keep records. I remember tone, timing, the way the room tilted when decisions were made without me, and later blamed on me. This is not narcissism, I insist—it’s documentation.
Kennedy never had to explain why the world leaned toward him. I have had to explain why the world leaned away from me. Over and over. In interviews, in relationships, in my own head at three in the morning when the Pacific goes quiet and even the birds seem to be withholding comment.
I should’ve been recognized sooner. I could’ve been protected. I would’ve been understood if understanding were a currency anyone actually spent. Instead, I got distance disguised as wisdom. I got told that pain was universal, which is a convenient way of saying yours doesn’t count.
So no, American Canto doesn’t end here. It can’t. Endings are for people who got closure, who got apologies that landed, who got to be wrong without being erased. This is a middle pretending to be an epilogue. This is me standing in the wreckage of should’ve, could’ve, would’ve, pointing out—accurately, relentlessly—that none of this was my fault, and that history, like love, has a habit of blaming the person who felt it most.