I am a believer that everyone has secrets.  These can be dark, cold and cavernous pools.  The walls in my office have contained thousands of these confessions.  I believe that behind the thousands whispered and stored here there are thousands that are kept buried that I haven’t found.  I learn to listen closely.  Look for clues or hand gestures.  A story does not make sense.  A story appears odd.  I ask the same question, three different times, in different ways.

I know something lurks.

Thousands upon thousands lurk. 

We all contain evil.  A strand or code burned into our DNA.  There are different layers.  There are different extremes.  We all are witnesses to broken humanity.  I wonder constantly about those that find themselves in that direct path.  The direct victims. 

Some disclose what they have endured freely to others.  I am a keeper of secrets.  I understand those that do not freely want to share what they have witnessed, endured, or exposed. 

I believe there is redeemption for the cruel who feel a shame.  Somehow maybe they can learn and make things right.

I believe others are more apt to explain or justify their horrible behavior.  Some have a situational melt down and go on killing sprees. 

The truly broken shell out blame.  It’s candy given at Halloween.

Victims don’t want to remember.  Some do.  Others want to forget.  A person close to them could be so monstrous or ugly. 

Most ingest themselves with self-blame.  They sit in that chair and recount how it just was all their fault.  If they had done a this or a that. 

Marks on their souls.

I believe an outward scar is easier to identify and explain.  It really is quite simple:   I fell off a ladder.  I tore my ACL in a pick-up game.  I slipped on some ice and broke a bone.

Scars on the inside don’t show.  You don’t point to them or say:   My lover punched me in the face.  My father molested me.  My mother burned me with a hot plate.  I was raped by my step-brother.  

Lines get crossed.  Lines are blurred and fuzzy.  There can also be so much grey.  Your evil might not be evil for me.  My evil might not be evil for you.

A white lie here.  A flirtation there.  A hand ventures to brush against a female breast.  Money borrowed from the cash fund will be paid back.  It is only one snort and one drink I am O.K. to drive.     

Even in the most sunny of behaviors I find wrinkles in the cloth.  I try and smooth them out with my hands.  The crease is stubborn.

To shine a light and dispel the darkness.  They don’t want to travel here.  It’s cave diving and no one wants to go.

They don’t want to figure it out right now.  I don’t want to figure it out right now.

My Sarah tells me something odd.  She doesn’t want to play soccer anymore.

This child loves soccer.  It’s her senior year.  We have a big old soccer ball hammered to our front yard tree.

She explains it away easy.  Slicing butter.  I forget about it.  I think about it.

Something is off.  Something is odd.

I shrug.  I have things to do, dinners to cook, a job to tend too.

Then a late night confession in our car.

It’s just something on the fringes near the edge.  It is creeping closer.

I am suddenly tired. 

I am in Cabo.  I watch new born baby sea turtles crawl though sand headed into a vast Pacific Ocean.  They are protected by the Mexican DNR.  The sea gulls circle above.

It is beyond me how any of them make it.  They are so very very tiny.  This moment is amazing.

There are huge crashing waves.  I know somewhere blue whales, sharks and sea lions lurk.

 

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It is very late.  I am outside drinking my whiskey and coke.  I light up the tea lights.  I am smoking a cigarette.

I welcome the scar on my face.  It matches the scar on my soul.  

I know I can’t keep my girls from going into this ocean.

 

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The tree frogs burp an odd chirpy cadence.  My cigarette smolders out an acid-sour stench. 

Both invade the night.  A delivering to the cosmos. 

What is destined to be delivered. 

Completely random, string theory, fates…………

Whatever it is just keep it at bay.  Keep it away from my sea turtles.
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