TITLE: BBNB2-She Wanted It That Way By David (The Goliath Assassin) 12/09/07 |
SEND A PRIVATE COMMENT
SEND ARTICLE TO A FRIEND |
Not all children die of violence. Not all abuses leave a bruise.
Not all abuses are allowed to unfold in their entirety.
Which might leave the victim asking
“What if it had? What was in store? What did she suffer for my cowardice?”
And so one abuse may mutate itself into another.
Perpetually self-inflicted.
And then clouds rise up into fields of view.
Rancid clouds of filth, billowing from the skeleton’s decomposition.
Billowing forth until the skeleton disappears.
The density and aroma of the atmosphere a constant.
Accepted as normal for lack of memory.
Or lack of desire to relive what hides beneath the mire.
Life goes on, waiting for you to catch up.
You fumble along and learn to keep pace
Accepting whatever handicaps you’ve acquired as your own.
Rationalizing their causes as something of your own doing.
Anything to forget. Anything to adjust.
You fumble along and learn to keep pace.
I did it too.
We left that world behind, and I figured it was over.
Bolted shut the cellar door.
Confident that I’d never need it again.
Just as unwilling to clean it out.
The problems had stopped coming from outside.
What trivialities crept near, for years, were nothing I couldn’t handle.
I was successful in my assimilation.
And then I saw her.
Sipriani. Even worse than Cataldo.
Shocking in similar ways to Romero, but a different kind of guilt.
Cataldo was a tall man I never met but, owed my life to. (Blood tests prove it.)
Romero was just a tall kid I cut down to size… perhaps too easily.
Sipriani was a tall kid who cut my soul in two when I was only six.
But then… he cut his sister’s soul plenty of times.
I was too much of a coward to speak up.
I never told until they moved away.
They all moved away, abrupt and unannounced.
I accepted that I’d have questions for all of them that could never be answered…
That peace between us (even vengeance) could never be attained.
But here she was. Plain as day.
If not for her name, I’d have never even recognized her.
(A theme that would later repeat itself, but let’s not stray down that alley.)
Yet my ill will was never meant for her.
I owed her my strength. “What did she suffer for my cowardice?”
All these years… and yet I had nothing to say.
“Hello…” Not enough. NEVER enough! PAY YOUR DEBT, little boy!
Say SOMETHING! Something more… show you cared… show your guilt.
“A-are you okay?” Of course... Of course she is.
Okay from what? The day went well. The past is the past, so just quit digging.
“Good. I‘m glad you’re okay.” That will have to do… people might be staring.
Genuinely more clueless than she pretended to be.
It was okay… not really… but practicality made our silence okay.
Nothing more had to be said. She wanted it that way.
Wanted to just sit on her cellar and keep it trapped in.
Had she come to me later, I’d have been strong.
She never came.
Though we shared the same math class, I never saw her again.
I wish I could say the same for her brother.
At that point in my life, I still wanted him dead.
The opinions expressed by authors may not necessarily reflect the opinion of FaithWriters.com.