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Showing posts from December, 2012

The Secrets We Keep

I don't know why we thought we could keep it from her. She is too smart--too aware --not to attune to the silent dirge within the nation's requiem.We know she knows, but we can't talk about it because of the reverb in our cathedral of lies. "Sometimes I see things in my head. Bad things happening to my family or friends. And I get scared I'm going to lose you," she said on the way home from school earlier this week. I looked at her in the rear view mirror. "Bad things? Like what?" "Like they're getting shot. Or...or some kind of violence." "That's an interesting way to put it. 'Violence.' Did you hear that somewhere recently?" "No," she said. Several weeks ago the house next to The Boss's school was gutted by a fire. Black window sockets still stare at the children every day. There's a tarp on the roof and the remnants of yellow police tape around the yard. One night The Boss cried in bed and said