Scars

A young boy
once pointed to the raised lines

littered across my arm and asked:

What are those?

I lied.

I told him it was a tally 

of all the men I’ve killed.

He looked at me all wide eyed

and asked further:

were they bad people?

I smiled

like it was all some kind of joke.

As if paying blood

to depression was funny.

I nodded to him.

I said: the worst kind of people.

When he asked for further details,

I ranted off—in perfect timing—that I

could not say more

because it was between me,

the current director of the CIA,

the head of the former soviet union,

God, and my real father.

I spoke so fluently,

that if I didn’t know better,

I would have sworn I rehearsed 

the exact conversation

in the mirror before he even asked me

the first question.

Lying about my pain

is just that easy.