The Revolution
a fable
There once was a man who was so good with a sword that he could cut out a man's heart and hold it up on the point of the sword for the man to watch as he died. They say that in his lifetime he grew into an old man and then back into a young man again. The man and his younger brother were rebel leaders during the last revolution. The elder brother was the more prominent of the two until his brothers' two sons were killed, shot by federal agents during a raid while they were under the older brother's care. The younger brother never held the incident against his sibling, understanding what it was like to fail to control a situation in your home when the government conducted a raid, having lost his first family in just that way, the incident which had caused both brothers to rebel. But the older brother was devastated by the second family massacre and made up within himself for his brother's lack of condemnation. It is said that he grew old, almost overnight, mourning the tragic loss of his young nephews. He remembered them. He remembered, sadly and fondly, their innocence and their joy of life. But mostly, he remembered the bullet holes in their white percale shirts stained with their blood. He spent colorless days passing through hibernating times as his life came apart, was put back together through the auspices of the revolution, and then came back apart again. He died young, and only his brother, who lived to be an old man, mourned his death.
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