Laitma

How does it go, then?I started in the middle, expecting the story to at any moment end,but you were always there at the beginning of each new cut, wistful, wanting,until I realized at last that the whole thing was made up of nothing more than endings, one after the other after the other, a failed story still trying to figure out: not how its ending should go, but how to escape itself.  And was I not there for you each time seeking you out (under rain and sun and the gaping maw of the empty sky), holding you down (my knuckles an offering to your teeth, your hair swimming in the sink), pulling you back (from the brink or towards it, I forget...

Let me re-write the history books with my fists, then, and the encyclopedias with my fingernails, and tell it right:This then is the height of humanity: a boy in a trench in the Somme, laughter hard as a bayonet, blood in his teeth, because war's the most beautiful thing in the world and he can't wait to die.  And this is the lowest point, then: a child who should've died is given a second chance, is told he is loved, and wanted, and has a home, but all of those he realizes are lies, wrapped like bandages tighter and tighter around him over the years, until he suffocates on their pity, and wonders: where is mercy?And what of mercy?  Mercy ...