Scream as you are brought into this world against your will. Scream to let them know you are alive, that to be alive is terrifying. They will place you in a glass prison full of tubes, not sure if you have what it takes. Already set up to fail.
Scream when they take you home, the couple who have claimed you. Fill their lives with noise until they take you back, demanding an exchange, demanding to know how to appease you when all you want is to be left alone.
Scream at night in the children’s home until the guardians come running. Let them soothe you. Pretend to believe them when they say everything will work out. That everything happens for a reason. Scream at God for failing to exist. For convincing the world otherwise.
Scream to rock and roll music as a teenager, turning trauma to sound to violence to trauma again. Let the older kids take you out to the mall and sing along to the alarms as you run off, holding women’s jewelry. Holding what isn’t your own.
Scream when you graduate and no company wants to take you on. When they ask about your record and you have to call yourself a criminal, repeating the word over and over until it is all you can think, all you have to hold onto.
Scream with excitement when you move in with one of your old classmates and he teaches you how to make cocaine and you can see a future for the first time. Drugs to money to love to happiness.
Scream when it actually fucking works. When you shout over the music to the girl of your dreams and she buys a bag off you. Takes you by the hand towards the toilets.
Scream at the same girl who is now your wife for not wanting kids. Scream until she changes her mind. Gives you a son, a chance to do better.
Scream at little Tommy for having everything you didn’t. Loving parents and somewhere to belong but still flunking out of school, getting drunk in the park before his eleventh birthday.
Scream because it is you he’s copying. Your anger and search for escape. Blame your wife for pushing him away when it is you he can’t stand to be around. You who spends every minute at work, risking everything by cutting coke with poison, with cement, now as absent in your son’s life as your own parents were in yours.
Scream when your wife leaves and takes Tommy with her. When she says she can’t take all the noise and you don’t know how to live without it.
Scream when the drug game catches up with you and you sell out your whole network to avoid serious jail time.
Scream when they leave death threats at your door and any moment could be your last.
Scream when you find yourself hiding in crowds. Comforted by the safety of protests that stream through the city.
Scream when you don’t know the cause you are supposed to be supporting but realize it doesn’t matter.
Scream to end police brutality. To fund the arts. For ceasefires in countries you didn’t know exist. Scream and scream and scream, hoping one day to be heard.
Rory is a British writer focusing on shorter works. He has been published in Vast Literary Press, SoFloPoJo, Passengers Journal, and Artam's The Face Project (forthcoming).
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