The injustices you carry will be like a cross of glass on your back. A secret shame. A secret spite. You will be stoned by your transgressors, anger arriving like a brick to the temple. The vitraux memories of content will lay in pieces around you.
They will want to hurt you, and they will succeed. It may come quick, like a stomach flu, bringing you to your knees. Or it may come like arthritis, year by year a new appendage failing you. You will at some time find yourself immobilized with hate.
They will be fine. They will take a coffee in the park. They will drive the same cars to work. They will get the promotion.
You will be wordless. Fury will cut out your tongue. Fury will make you take the false oath of silence. Fury will pluck each repugnant thought from your skull. It will make your young brain a cat organ, howling at a sideshow.
There will be some pains that come routinely, meeting you at the street corner each morning. Some you will be lucky enough to just barely miss. And then there will be pains shared with a parting glance with a stranger at the bus station who you learn—in an instant—carries the same cross.
You will go up to your own Golgotha to seek martyrdom. And you will find no one who wishes to witness the miracle. To know of another’s pain and to be unable to excise it can be more vile than the pain itself.
You will remain silent. And you will wear that cross of glass at your back, so clear that it is nearly imperceptible. And it may come to pass that someday, someone may ask you about it when you are hunched over from its weight. You may think, this is the day. You may think, here, my burden shall be cast away.
When the burden is lifted, it will be like drawing the arrow from the wound. The pain will be new. The pain will be deep. You will be left swaybacked and hollow and without the fury that kept you alive.
So though the weight of the cross may pain you, you will stand up straight. You will someday be so used to its weight, it will no longer feel present. You will believe that everyone has a burden to carry. And the fury will be the light of the hearth calling you home out of a deep winter night.
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Jane Diesel is a nuisance with work appearing in Surfaces, Trashworld and self-published at Casse-Couilles.
HARSH 