humans, part 2

3 days of staring at this bright white, electric paper.  3 days, 3 million-something thoughts, and nothing could satisfy the empty page that you now see, filled.  You wanted me to talk about being human, but talking about humanity to a bunch of other humans is the same as beckoning a crowd of fresh ex-girlfriends to banter about their pathetic men as they sip from hot drinks and breathe each other's air.

It's dangerously warm in here.

I promised never to be dark.  But this is humanity that we're talking about.  The silken webwork of a human mind is not dark, but it's deep.  So deep that even the light can't reach certain places.

Humans have art, each person to their own. That's all they have, really, that you can both touch and not: tangible and felt.  Every breathing human has it. Every dead human had it once.

Even my tormentors had it.  They had the art of words, deep words, and ways of words, strung along their backs like a case of bows and arrows. They would paint, too, paint bruises on bodies.  I was a walking mess of purple flesh and swollen eyes, with bones that felt too broken to walk on.  And I was their grand piece, their framed work that they streaked paint across with steady strokes, and salted for texture, and ran their clean hands on once I dried, just to feel the effect of their work.

The reality is not as beautiful.  It was a hard, plastic junior high cafeteria with ugly words that fell from pretty, preteen mouths, and wadded notes that seemed to reach in and drag tears out of eyes.  It was high-collared female teachers with thick accents, and papers with dark words, and the panic that, at only thirteen, swelled in me as the lunch bell rang. It was their fingers pushing into my skin as if to break through it, the fists they formed, and the laughs that turned my tears into cement.  It was how they buried me without a ceremony, a funeral in all-black, where God sends rain because nobody's crying.

And that's my story.  They never have morals to them. Sure, I overcame it. I left my despair in the weedy, dark junior high cafeteria, and I hope a little piece of me still sits with them.  I hope they run their bloody hands through that silk hair and all over those fresh collars and neatly-done shoes.  Because it's my blood, and they put it on their hands. 

I want to know: I've washed the blood from my healed wounds. Have they?