Today's writing

But eventually we all get stung. There’s really no escaping it. My turn came on a sunny winter day where the sky’s promise was dashed by the wind. It was cold. Still, we were eating outside because we did that until we couldn’t do it anymore. We wanted to be outside. We spent enough time indoors. When it came to lunch, we wanted trees and sun, even if the former were dead and the latter a lie.

 

I was sitting on the concrete, a fourth grader with legs crossed – criss-cross applesauce, as they said – when it happened. Katherine was trying to take my Devil Dogs. “Don’t touch the merchandise,” I warned her, waving a hand in her face.

 

Then a sting in the crook of my arm. It felt like someone had opened a tiny hole in my flesh and poured in bleach. I yelped. To this day I’m not sure if I was more disturbed by the pain or the surprise. Probably both. Possibly neither. Sometimes we don’t know why we do what we do until a long way down the road, if we ever find out at all.

 

But I didn’t die. That much is obvious. For years I liked to believe this taught me that very little was so dire as to be the end, other than the end itself. A chunk of concrete to the head. A disease ripping you from the inside out. Pain so profound that it could only by ended by one’s own hand.