The words dance behind bloodshot eyes like the tip of a flame around the jet fueled cylinder. Swatting at phrases and stories liable for redemption, hoping that this catch will finally get you on the map. That they’ll all be wrong about you and your “success,” as make believe as a small girls dreams of a unicorn, or a middle age man’s plea with fate in playing the lottery.
All I see are pictures. Pictures of my boy hung upside down. Eyes swollen shut. Suspended in the air by over-sized fishhooks traced through his inner organs and workings, wound together like mother’s knitting.
How dark can it get? How far can I travel into the recesses of my brain to find the images that disturb and outrage? How can I be so desensitized to the thought of my own father mutilated and maimed by the hands of terrorism? Or shrapnel tearing through Vietnamese children like a chainsaw cutting through paper?
Writing Challenging Boundaries
