Prove me wrong

Well, brother, I have my reservations about you.

You seem like the type to tell me that pain in the shape of a heart is unnatural.

Unnatural is a natural born killer.

He took the lives of eight adolescents just last week, but no one has the balls to put unnatural on trial.

No one has the guts to stand up and say GUILTY!GUILTY!GUILTY!.

We are victims of hatred, murders, suicides, sins.

We have not been granted immunity, and we've all helped hide a body or two.

We are too small to peer into the mirror, unafraid that unnatural will stare back.

We are all too small to stab the sharks in business suits, too small to string unnatural up but his $400 cufflinks and leave him to rot.

We are too small to shatter our bathroom mirrors and cut unnatural out of our faces, out of our chests, with shards of glass.

We are too small.

Brother, I suspect that you are not the type to grab unnatural by his dry-cleaned lapels and spit in his face.

That's what I'm after—good cop and bad cop, fearless interrogator with a genuine smile,

Not some hungry defense attorney, ready to lunge at the first soft neck he sees.

SAVE ME is written across your face.

How many locked their suffering in cellars under their rib cages and tried to lose the keys?

How many people in this room alone are wearing the words SAVE ME like a diamond ring?

How many hang them on their walls like certificates of honorable discharge?

Each person is an outcast, waiting for rescue, waiting for revolution.

But if all of us are here in the cellar, who could be manning that ever-anticipated life boat? Who could be fighting our civil war?

Brother, you seem like the type to tell me that pain in all colors is unnatural.

Please, correct me if I'm wrong.

Brother, I have my reservations about you because you seem like the type to look me in the eye and say that love is not a plateau, that love is BLACKBLACKBLACK or WHITE and shades of gray do not occur in nature.

You seem like the type that peers into the mirror and sees an island, the type that thinks that cargo ships and radio waves from my island to yours are not what the invisible hand intended.

You seem like the closeted pariah type.

You seem like the victim type.

You seem prepared to carry all your suffering in a steel box beneath your bones.

Please, please, please prove me wrong.