The Truth That Doesn't Fade

I learned the raw meat of every pack long before I ever sniffed out their holy whispers. Grew up in a cracked-concrete jungle, hemmed in by wild-eyed kids with switchblades for teeth and fists like empty beer cans. No room for poring over the gilded lies of history books—those pretty stories about kings and saviors. Nah, I was too busy weaving through the shadows, ducking the endless scrabble for turf, the way the world chews up the weak and spits out the bones.It's the oldest hunger, that conquest, nature's greasy thumb on the scale. And you, with your polished signs and your chants against the old poisons—you swallow it down just the same as the rest of us gutter rats. The red men clung to their clans like lifelines in a storm, feathers and war paint drawn tight around the fire. The white ghosts crossed oceans with iron and crosses, carving their names into the dirt for the bloodlines to come. Cherokee for the Cherokee, Apache carving out their slice of hell under the same merciless sun. Loyalty's a blade you sharpen on your own kin's whetstone; you huddle close to your pack or get trampled flat in the mud.I've stared into that mirror too many times, nursing a warm pint in some dive where the jukebox coughs out forgotten blues. Seen the eyes of men who’d sell their mothers for a scrap of power, women who’d claw through walls for a taste of belonging. Peace? That's a fairy tale peddled by the fat and the fenced-in. Real quiet comes from the barrel of resolve, from stacking your walls high enough that the wolves circle but never breach. You chip away at my blood's old ramparts, you soft-hearted crusaders with your rainbow flags and your guilt-soaked sermons—you're not saving souls, you're handing out invitations to the slaughter. My tribe, this ragged thread of European wanderers, salt-stung sailors and factory ghosts, we've bled for these scars. Weaken that, and watch the dark roll in like fog off the harbor, thick and unforgiving.In the end, we're all just dogs in the alley, snapping at shadows, loyal to the hand that doesn't beat us first. I raise a glass to the brutality—it's the only truth that doesn't fade with the dawn.