tango . nine [cb / fin]

T   A   N   G   O

Childhood was easy even when it wasn't.

Wool over eyes but we just didn't know it yet, stepping on equal footing just waiting to break, blunt sticks in place of guns and stones in place of bombs. War games in yards that were not our own under the scorned eye of a neighbor who didn't have the energy left to say anything anymore, or maybe he'd just known that the innocence would never last. It's a lonely one, sitting in the obliviousness of youth, unable to recognize the belly of the beast as it consumes you slowly. 

Until you do, look down narrow walls and feel your skin press into them as the world caves in around you, eyes widened to the way the shadows of Nine don't contain monstrous beasts but something all too human to handle, consumption and greed and a pawn in a game you could never win.

I watched so many of them step into it and never step back out, lawn games and hey i totally hit you! and no you didn't and a wrestling match to decide it turn to bullets in barrels and fingers on triggers, holes in body and roses blooming from the source, dying eyes watching them do nothing but wilt.

No one ever says how empty it is to be one of the lucky ones, how much it burns.

How much it empties you, a shell of a boy turned to a man too soon, nameless and forgotten by a District that was never truly home.

A gun is a gun no matter if the hands that hold it are wrapped in white or not, the willingness to take orders, to kill if needed, to turn from human to number, kids from Nine are basically born with it. I think that's why they forced the academies here, to pull from an endless pool of childhoods ruined, to pull from the instinct so many of us were born with. I think that's why I joined, convinced myself I had a choice.

Now I stand, wavering loyalty written into my bones, hearing a man who is above me yell out instructions to soldiers, children. To me, one of the lucky ones.