The Sound Of Blu

“I know you’ll probably never see this, but if you do, know that I’ll never forget you…”

Somewhere, a baby was born.

A baby boy.

Not in a delivery room, but in some rundown trailer off the side of State Highway 22. Instead of being greeted into the world with the awkward smell of bleached hospital walls and blinding lights, he was plopped out onto a peeling linoleum floor and wiped off with a sweaty handkerchief. No nurses were there to check his weight or measure his length. No doctors were there to record his vitals or swaddle him up. No, instead he was just picked up, smacked across the ass a few times, and placed in the kitchen sink next to some stained coffee mugs. The umbilical cord was cut with a pocketknife and clamped off with a hair-tie. Some old towels were scattered across the floor to keep the blood from seeping onto the living room carpet.

Unsurprisingly, the boy began to cry.

Also unsurprisingly, no one in the house really seemed to care. Out of the nine or ten people present that cool November day, not a single one of them bothered to go check on him. Instead, the boy’s mother just staggered back over to her recliner while his father swept up the afterbirth and dumped it into the dog bowl. Their children, the other eight of them, were either busy helping with the mess or outside chopping wood before the winter hit hard. Like their baby brother, they were born into this hellhole, and it was up to them to keep the fire going.

With no name, no remorse, and no affection, that boy lied in that sink; his screams periodically drowned out by the occasional ‘AMEN!’ and ’PRAISE JESUS!’ that echoed from the TV.

With no name, no remorse, and no affection, that boy lied in that sink. Whether he liked it or not, he was nothing more than another mouth to feed.

With no name, no remorse, and no affection, that boy’s life began in a rundown trailer tucked into the woods somewhere off State Highway 22.

Somewhere, a baby was born.

A baby boy.

And nobody gave a shit…