Leaving Rhode Island: The Letter

We got the letter on a Tuesday

It said, um, well, I’m going to have to paraphrase

I don’t have the letter anymore

But it’s all online

And you know the deal anyway, right?

It said ‘You’re being asked to leave Rhode Island’

A bunch of us got the letter

And we knew it was coming

Because it had been on the news

For awhile

X-number of Rhode Islanders

--A hundred and seven was the final tally they went with—

Had to vacate their residencies

Quit their jobs

And leave their families and friends

They gave you a month

A month—to do all that

If you owned a home, you got three months

So you could sell it

Any other outstanding obligations didn’t matter

If you had a lease, it was voided

So were any job contracts

Or pre-existing commitments

One to three months

And over a hundred of us

Had to disappear

Now, of course, we fought this exile

Even before we knew who was being exiled

And at first, it seemed like a no-brainer that we would win

You can’t just kick people out of a state for no reason, right?

And the Rhode Island government wasn’t giving us a reason

Why we were being kicked out

So we took it to court, and the court found that we had a right to stay

But then the state government appealed, and somehow, they won

It went on like that right up to the Supreme Court

It would seem like we were going to win

And then a lawyer from the state would have a heart-to-heart with the judge

And suddenly what they were doing was totally fine

And we’d better start packing

There were protests, rallies—even a riot outside the state house

But then moving day came, and if you didn’t leave

The police arrested you and—basically—deported you

To some randomly assigned place

When the people who got kicked out realized that they’d, you know

Essentially lost the battle

We just picked places to go

Figuring eventually this would all blow over

Otherwise you ran the risk of them sending you to Alaska or Idaho or something

Most people stayed close to home—

Massachusetts or Connecticut

But some people just said ‘Screw it’

And took off for, like, Paris and Siberia, or whatever

You know what I mean

Families promised they wouldn’t let this go

That they’d get this taken care of

And I think we even hired a lobbyist

But ultimately, you know, fanfare died down

And we were just another lost issue

That nobody cared about

Even our families moved on
We were told we couldn't step foot inside the state
During the exile

Some people tried and they got arrested
And the state made it a felony
Even though it was really just trespassing
So after two of us got jailed
Nobody else tried

People said our families should have just moved with us
But how do you ask everybody you to know
To uproot their lives
Just because you had to, you know?

We could make phone calls
We could talk online
We could send letters, if we really wanted to be precious, you know
But after awhile
Even the people who loved us just...
Kind of got used to us not being around

I mean, it’s not like we were executed in the streets

We just couldn’t live in one out of fifty states
And it happened to be the smallest one
That everybody complained about having to live in

So what was the big deal anyway, right?

Eventually, public opinion just turns against you

Either because of contrarianism

Or because, you know, people have their own problems

And yeah, some of them are even bigger than yours

There was speculation

And conspiracy theories

People saying we were secret terrorists

Or aliens or something

I used to say if we were terrorists they’d force us to live in Rhode Island

So that we wouldn’t do harm to any of the important states

The whole thing was such bullshit

And, you know, here’s the crazy thing

I was one of those people who didn’t even like Rhode Island all that much

I always talked about leaving

But, I guess, you know, I’m like everybody else

Tell me I can’t do something

And I want to do it

Tell me I can’t live somewhere

And that’s exactly where I want to live

So when they told me I had to get out

My first reaction was—Hell no, I’m not going anywhere

Isn’t that crazy?

What’s even crazier is that five years after they made us leave

We got another letter

On a Tuesday

Saying, ‘Hey, guess what everybody?  No more exile--

--C’mon back.’

This is after we’d gotten new jobs

And new friends

And new lives

Some people had remarried

Bought new homes

Figured they were never going to get to come back

And then…that letter arrives

And at first, it seems like a no-brainer

You’re not just going to go back to your old life

Five years after you left it

I mean, you can’t really even if you wanted to, right?

But it’s more complicated than that, you know?

Because even though everybody knows you can’t go back to the way things were…

Doesn’t everybody kind of want to try?