PolitiFact Has Labeled 2025 ‘The Year of the Lies’ — By Patricia Q. Bidar

artwork by Valerie Timmons

My country is decaying props from a 1920s music hall. Fake mustaches and mutton chops. Plastic eyelashes, pushup brassieres, and glittering powder. Styrofoam barbells. A moth-gnawed tightrope.

My country is a coin pusher machine. Blaring lights, electric cheer. Gold so bright it stings the eyes. We surrender our wages, await the bonanza that will fill our cupped and empty hands.

My country is Cloud Dancer, the Pantone color of the year. PANTONE 11-4201 evokes pleasure without overstimulation. PANTONE 11-4201 cocoons with its aerated and vaporized appearance. PANTONE 11-4201 encourages relaxation for those seeking moments of rest, disconnection.

My country is a divorced dad, the rambler who “wouldn't be on the hook for a dime” without a DNA test. He counterfeits nurture with spectacle and sugar. But he promised he’d get me. So I wait on the porch, packed and stoked for promised cheer. Fun times, like the old times, back when I was littler.

He’s three towns over, blowing his paycheck on bloody steaks and compliant women. Car after car whooshes past. There is no roar of his Firebird; no hearty shout.

My hero isn’t here.

My hero isn’t coming.

No one is coming.

Patricia Q. Bidar is a western U.S. writer and Port of Los Angeles area native. She is the author of the flash fiction collection, Pardon Me for Moonwalking (2025, Unsolicited Press) and the novelette, Wild Plums (2024, ELJ Editions). Patricia’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals including Wigleaf, Painted Bride Quarterly, Another Chicago, Waxwing, The Pinch, and Smokelong Quarterly, and has been selected for Flash Fiction America (W.W. Norton), Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfiction anthologies. She lives, writes, and reads in the San Francisco Bay Area. Visit patriciaqbidar.com