Happy Retirement, Joni!

FROM THE TOOTH FAIRY

Dear Senator Ernst,

Back on June 5th, I warned you. I slipped into your inbox like I slip under pillows, wings buzzing, bag full of teeth, and I told you plainly: keep my name out of your mouth. I told you that mocking Medicaid cuts with death jokes and cemetery tours wasn’t leadership — it was rot. And you ignored me. You smirked. You shrugged. You doubled down. And now look at you: the mighty Senator from Iowa, the first woman to hold the seat, reduced to a retirement announcement so flat it might as well have been typed by an undertaker.

This isn’t outrage anymore, Joni. This is the sound of me laughing as the curtain falls. You’ve been pulled from the gums of American politics like an impacted molar that everyone was too squeamish to touch until now. I warned you I know rot when I smell it, and you reeked. You still do. Your career didn’t end with dignity — it crumbled, chipped, and snapped like a bad crown glued on at a discount strip-mall dentist.

You thought you were clever when you told people “we’re all going to die.” You thought cruelty wrapped in sarcasm could pass for wit. But the truth is, death wasn’t your punchline — it was your platform. And the voters smelled it. They smelled the embalming fluid in your soundbites, the smug stench of a politician who thought cynicism was a governing philosophy. You carried yourself like a cryptkeeper in pearls, and in the end, you wound up exactly where you belonged: a political corpse on the way to the landfill of history.

Do you know how many times I’ve brushed past headstones since June, wings clipping epitaphs, listening for echoes? Hundreds. Thousands. And you know what I hear, Joni? Not reverence. Not legacy. Just the faint laughter of ghosts who recognize another fraud when they see one. They know your name will never be chiseled into granite next to words like “courage” or “honor.” At best, you’ll get a dusty footnote in a civics textbook, a reminder of the senator who smirked through the suffering and left office with less grace than a wisdom tooth yanked without anesthesia.

Meanwhile, I go on. I keep working nights, slipping coins under pillows in Council Bluffs and Davenport, Des Moines and Dubuque. I’ve left nickels for kids whose parents you voted to abandon, quarters for children whose insulin was priced out of reach, dimes for the ones who clenched their jaws through hunger while you joked about death. Every coin carries a message, Joni. Every envelope glitters with the truth: you failed them. And I will keep reminding them of that failure long after you’ve faded into bourbon-soaked obscurity.

So, yes. Happy Retirement. Enjoy the hollow applause at your farewell dinners, the awkward handshakes from colleagues who already replaced you in their speed-dials, the bourbon that burns like plaque at the back of your throat. Enjoy your dwindling relevance as you wander through the same Iowa towns you once mocked, shaking the same hands you once abandoned, pretending this was your choice all along. Because it wasn’t. It was inevitability. Rot always wins, and I told you that on June 5th.

I’ll keep flying, Senator. I’ll keep collecting, cataloguing, remembering. I’ve outlasted kings, tyrants, televangelists, and hacks far more cunning than you. You’ll vanish like spit down a sink drain, and I’ll still be here, leaving tiny coins under pillows in the ruins you helped build.

Sincerely,
🦷 The Tooth Fairy
Immortal, Unforgiving, and Still on Night Shift

P.S. I warned you months ago that rot is forever. Retirement doesn’t erase it. It just makes the smell stronger.

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