A Bone in His Teeth

by Kellen Graves

You of all people know how easy it is to depict something terrible as something beautiful with enough color and flowers and grinning faces.”

That that was done on purpose, that keeping you from learning how to live elsewhere was the best way to keep you compliant.

I do not forgive them for casting me out, but—” he clenched his jaw again, before the tension in his body relaxed, as if finally letting go of something invisible clinging to his back, weighing him down. “I do not think… they deserved to suffer like this. I never wished them peace, or happiness, but—I never wished them pain, either. A part of me always even wished they might realize their cruelty, learn from it, come looking for me, or at least welcome me back if I ever returned. Another part of me wished to forget they ever existed, to live as if I’d never had a family at all. Either way, perhaps all I ever wanted was peace.”