Just How Evil Is Humanity

Some days I think we were born tilted, a vertebra out of place in the spine of the world— a child learning to walk by stepping on ants, the smile never quite guiltless. We touched the stars with one hand, dropped bombs with the other. We learned to name the parts of the heart as we learned to break them. My father could thread a belt through the air like a needle through skin— but he also cried at Bach. I don’t know what that makes him. Or me. We are the animal that paints war in murals, that kisses after cruelty. The scale is not broken— it was forged this way.