Inside each of us is a boy who cries out for emancipation.

Silence his voice with your own as we beseech.

The story must be told.

The story must be told.

We remember the trials of St. Miles, who begged the weak to hammer their shovels into clubs.

We recall how the weak beat him down and, once dead, had no shovels with which to bury him.

Let us hear the words they spoke as he rotted.

I was digging in the garden, uprooting hydrangeas, after they poisoned my dog dead.

My shovel hit soft tissue, spilling blood in the dirt.

With my hands, I excavated what lay below.

It was a boy, in full military dress, buried with honors.

He stirred awake.

I had disrupted his boyhood hibernation. He said he wasn't finished yet. Had some more growing to do. He fell asleep as I buried him back.

Seventeen years later, what do you know? A grown man crawled out of the grass. The National Guard was waiting for him, drew him, and quartered him by the swing set.

The crime was desertion.

Before they buried him, they wrapped him in a flag.

Burry the story in an unmarked grave of iniquity so we might revisit it and vomit.

We are guilty of treachery if we cry out the story in a coward's tone.

Reduce your hands to stumps and pick up a quill made of greasy fingerbone.

Wet the tip in an inkwell of yearning as we speak, the story must be told.

The story must be told. The story is not me told. And now from the book of cowards, an aptly titled story called The Veteran by Orklinghoffer

Snipple Hopper.

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