All the Sinners Bleed

by S.A. Cosby

No one knows the hidden rivers of a man’s spirit like his mama.

that was the thing about violence. It didn’t always wait for an invitation. Sometimes it saw a crack in the dam and then it flooded the whole valley.

What annoyed him about Top Cat was the overabundance of self-righteousness he now possessed. It was a trait common to the recently saved. Especially if one suffered from some form of dependency in their previous unsaved life. It was like they traded a secular addiction for a sanctified one. “I

The ability of one human to visit depravity upon another was as boundless as the sea and as varied as there were grains of sand on a beach.

Waiting for the world to shed tears for your pain was like waiting for a statue to speak.

“Terrible people can do good things sometimes. But they like doing the terrible things more.

Sometimes grief is love unexpressed. Other times it’s regret made flesh.

“Evil is rarely complicated. It’s just fucking bold.”

The Word is perfect, but the way men interpret it is corrupt.

Later, after his mother was in the ground, he realized the Word was just as corrupt as the men who read it. Old Testament, New Testament, it was just words with a little w, written by zealots as PR for their new cult founded in the memory of a dead carpenter.

There was ugliness, sure, but there was beauty in the world, there was grace, if you knew where to look. It was there if you were brave enough or foolish enough to seek it.

The kind of pain they put him through, the hatred they poured into him all in the name of what they called church, well, I don’t think one killing would be enough for him, do you? That kind of hurt stays hungry.”

It occurred to him no place was more confused by its past or more terrified of the future than the South.

All I do know is violence begets more violence and all violence is a confession of pain. Hurt people tend to hurt people.