Postcard 68

Think of me, don't think of me. Think of you through me, my eyes, my gaze. Think of misty nights of bus-stop waiting, in blurred confidences buried securely in oblivion. Think of crying, solid-shouldered brotherhood and clumsy corner punching jaws. Think of love captured and committed, as complex as river-cut stone. Think of proud parent gazing down and the wonder: what happens when I fall? Think of you through me, aging friendship found and strained. Teeth on lips and shoulders, and 'you know better' and 'I know'. Think of fire-warmed skin in forest dark and all our gleaming-bodied friends. Think of scared unsure and hurt and the hope and grace of my strong-muscled hand in yours and yours in mine. Think of too worn apologies thrown and skipped and skipped and accepted into dark like river swallowed stones. Think of laughter, of teeth, of eyes. Think of the beauty of bodies aging, round or lithe. Think of sun-kissed shoulders new and tight, of chapped lips and the graceful lines of living long across your face. Think of holding me weak, of me holding you strong. Think of witness. Think each smell that holds a whole. Think that moment when, through me, you were all, and that walk away.

Postcard 62

 
The quote is something along the lines of:  "Do you want to know the history of humanity? Killing children. Killing children is the history of humanity." A striking statement. Is it true? A game I play is to imagine the worse thing that could be happening and then know that it is likely, in a world as full and calloused as ours, that that thing is happening, or has recently or will soon. What  morbid game. I've not completely sussed out how this exercise helps me but I know that it gives me an idea of the scope of the size of the world and somehow builds my compassion. Yes. children are killed horrifically the world over, but not so monotonously as to be the history of humanity. I think the assertion is true if we consider it metaphorically. What is above is the extreme, the outlier. But considering the children we all begin as, consider how rarely that child survives into adulthood, then yes, that is our history. Survivors are the outliers. I don't have some naivety about the innocence of children. They are brutal and selfish and shortsighted. But as a vicious dog is made not born, so an adult is made.
Here is what is murdered, here is the murder that we partake in: the death of marvel, the oblivion of the moment and most horrifically, the brutal evisceration of trust.