On April 25th in 1983
the Soviet Union
released a letter
that Russian leader Yuri Andropov
had written in response
to a note from an American fifth-grader
named Samantha Smith
from Manchester Maine
who asked if the Soviets
were planning to start
a nuclear war.
He answered
that Russia wanted
to “live in peace
to trade and cooperate
with all our neighbors on the globe
no matter how close
or far away they are
and certainly
with such a great country
as the United States of America.”
In this reality
Andropov invited Smith
to the Soviet Union
and she became
an ambassador for peace
until she was tragically killed
in a plane crash
in August of 1985
at the age of 13.
This event is just one
which would be rewritten
in history textbooks
via an executive order
from the Trump presidency
changing the story
to end with Smith's plane
being shot down
by the USSR.
This just makes it all the more important
for people of all ages
to learn our shared history
before we all
are doomed to repeat
Trump's version of it.
This poem © 2016 Emily Cooper.
