Brick red blood

I bleed brick red blood. It trickles down from the crease in my upper lip into my mouth, a result of careless shaving. It is copper, iron, familiar, the taste of defeat.

The taste of blood is the taste of adolescent violence in the hot streets east of Los Angeles. It is the sensation that I am little and the world can destroy me without warning. Fear follows the taste in thin long vapors, a cigarette-smoke wispy experience. All phantoms of childhood disappear. This is the blessing of being human, that we forget.

The blood remembers.