Blood in/Mass shooting/Suicide out.

I remember walking home bloody

and walking in the front door

to the old man at the table

smoking cigarettes

with my mom

and when he asked me

what my problem was

I told him since we’d

moved there

a week ago

two boys older than me

two grades higher

were chasing and beating me

after school

while I tried to make it

across the field to our house

and every day it’s gotten

worse

until today when

they finally drew blood

my mother hustled to the

kitchen for the bottle of

shitty, burning-orange salve

to make the cuts worse and

while she rubbed it into the gaps of

blood and dirt and small rocks

in my knees and palms and forehead

the old man told me tomorrow on the way

home, I was to take my time across

the field, and when the two of them

stopped me

to punch the biggest one

square in the nose

and not to return home

until I did

and if I didn’t

then to plan on sleeping outside

without supper

or anything else

my mother started going on about

how she was going to call the school

and that I should report the

boys to the principal or vice principal

or to the teacher

but the old man saved me

the trouble of explaining

to her that no matter

how that was played out

I’d be labeled a rat

and I’d have it even worse

and the best way from A

to Z was a straight line

and it was time for me

to start figuring things

out and she started inventing

ways I could reason with the

boys, or how they could talk to

their parents, all the other angles

but he we wasn’t budging

and even after I left the room

they kept it going

I barely slept that night

because I took the old man

seriously

with his long beard

and tattooed fingers

back when no other dad had

such things

and also because I didn’t know

how to throw a punch

or if I could even reach the

bastard’s nose

and I was terrified

but the day was over

and I walked the field home

and the two boys were

there

and the books and folders

and backpack were again

knocked out of my hands

and I was again shoved to the

ground

and my adrenaline was boosted

and I could feel the old man

somehow watching me

and I went ahead and

brought it up

and hit the big one

on the nose

and the blood spat sideways

and he went down instantly

screaming a high pitched wail

while his buddy ran off

and a crowd formed and

I picked up my shit

walked home

where my knuckles

throbbed and my mom

wrapped my hand with

ice crushed in a wet wash rag

and the old man laughed

and nodded at me

and told me

once I took shit once,

I’d take it for the rest

of my life

and from then on

I had no trouble at school

but today this would be

“offensive”

and barbaric

the old man would be in jail

or slapped with some lawsuit

and

I’d be a pariah

and we’d be all over YouTube

today, instead of teaching our children to

truly stand up for themselves

they revert to their natural

forms of confusion

and cut their own flesh or

they blow each other away or

they commit suicide

on the Internet

due to

bullying.