Let's Talk

There are things we don't talk like to admit to that we all do.  Then there are the things few of us have done:  Stolen to feed ourselves or our family.  Killed in self-defense.  Washed the blood of our enemies off our faces while staring at ourselves in the cracked bathroom mirror of a closed gas station, trying to ignore the disgraced doctor stitches up a knife wound in our thighs with nothing to dull the pain except a light dusting of some unknown powder said doctor had been stuffing up his nose ten minutes before.  Stab a needle into our legs to inject farm store penicillin every day for a week while delirious from fever, the only saving grace the burning pain from the injection lost in the agony of the infection slowly eating away at our wound.  The nightmares so lovingly called "fever dreams" claiming us every time we pass out, only to snap awake and stare at the water-stained ceiling of a condemned motel that was far too close to the hunters, the police, to allow any rest while awake.

But maybe we need to talk about these things, lest we forget they ever happen; lest we doom ourselves to repeat them.