Chapter 1.6: Found In Pain

“Man little dude let me tell yah. Life sucks shit. Everything about it and ain’t nothing ever changing.” Isaiah shakes his head and stares out across the street, his hood over his head, the only protection from the rain that incessantly pours without relent.

I bite my lip and shrug and stare out across the street as he does, watching as the rain pours hard and the cars whip by, seemingly as though everyone is in a hurry. I see across the street this family packing in their children from the seafood shack—laughing joyously, waving goodbye to their friends. And against my better judgement I stare at them curiously while I hold myself from the cold.

“Don’t get excited lil man. That’s not you. Ain’t nobody care about you. Why you think you here?” I bite my lip again and look down at the puddle in front of me—trying not to cry, but against my better will a tear slips my eye. “Nigga you cryin!? Why you cryin!? That’s not you! It ain’t eva gonna be you!” Tears though still drip down my face. Because I wish it were me . . . Why isn’t it me?

Isaiah pulls out a cigar and lights it.

“Shit. We ain’t nobody! Nobody cares! Once you understand that you gonna be better off.” I look down at the puddle before me again, and see myself—and I hate what I see. A pale, frail boy shivering in the cold with hair going every which way. The face of a third-worlder, with pain so strong, so convicting that my eyes cry blood.

My eyes cry blood

Because all I see is blood

All I hear is blood

I am blood

And blood runs me, hurts me

I cry blood out of exhaustion

Out of sickness and hatred

Out of pain and anger

Out of depression that rests in the back of my mind

I cry blood readily and ineffectively

For nobody hears me, sees me

I cry blood for brothers, for sisters, for parents

All struggling in this forsaken world

I cry blood out of the hopelessness of nothing else

And sometimes, when tears can’t come, I speak blood

I hear blood, I see blood, I eat blood, I love blood.

But slowly, like AIDS, blood all intermixed with people I don’t know and to me cease to exist

Kill me

I cry blood