Where the Bad Men Are

Don’t take me to the place where the bad men are, she says.

Take me somewhere else, she says beneath her shawl.

No, he says, we won’t go there.

Take me to our friends, our people, she says, her belly seizing now.

Don’t take me to a place of strangers.

No, he says, we can’t go there, to our kin.

No, he says, perhaps to strangers now.

Don’t take me to the place where all the criminals are,

The inn where those people stay, the ones nobody wants in their home.

Don’t take me there to all those eyes.

No, he says, we won’t go there. We won’t let them see you in your pain.

Don't take me to where Mother and Father can’t come. Turn back.

No, he says, it’s too late. We’re almost there. We must go on.

Find us a place where I can lie down alone, she says.

No, he says, there is no place alone.

Take me to shelter, give me straw at least.

I cannot think.

I must cry out.

No, he says, cry out.  The beasts here are not the human kind.

Yes, he says. Look at Him! See, cattle; see, sheep.

Yes, she says.  A treasure enters my heart.

Yes, He says, I will go there. 

To all the beasts, to all the aloneness, to where people cry out.

Yes, He says.

I go to all the indifferent eyes, to all the strangers.

Yes, He says.

I won’t turn back.

Yes, He says.

I will go to where the bad men are.

–copyright, Latayne C. Scott