\\\Lies///
||By SkItZoFrEaK||

Notes: Excepting for the last stanza, I didn't write the poem scattered throughout this story. The story, though, is mine.

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I want to tell that little boy his Mom will be just fine.
I want to tell that Dad we got his daughter out in time.
I want to tell that wife her husband will be home tonight.
I don't want to tell it like it is.....
I want to tell them lies.

I remember how the world used to look to me. Fresh, and new and beautiful. Everything bright and clean-cut, as if it had just been pulled from the mold and pasted all together. There were people and places and things to dream about, endless fresh sounds to ring in my ears and colorful sights to paint across my eyes. The planet was a toy, brand new out of the box. In my childhood arrogance, since I was good, and I was happy, then everyone was good and happy too, of course.
And then one day, when I was seven or so, I went to play at a friend's house. She lived down in a poorer neighborhood than I; the houses were old and rambling, falling apart in some places. I didn't really like their yard, because the grass was yellow and bristly and jabbed spitefully through my thin sandals, and the gutters nearby smelled funny.
I managed to brush all that aside, though, with the determined ignorance of a child. I played with my friend for an hour or so, just running up and down the street, dueling with sticks, and other youthful games. Suddenly, I heard the sirens screaming down the next street. "What's goin' on?" I asked my friend, but she shrugged and rubbed a dirty bare toe in the dust of the sidewalk.
"Nothin', I bet."
But I was young, and curious, and besides, I was tired of playing sticks. I kept getting whacked on the knuckles. "I just want to look," I told her, and I ran to the backyard to see what was going on.

I can see you're crying as your life goes up in smoke.
If you'd maintained that smoke alarm, your children may have woke.
Don't grab my arm and ask me if your family is alive.
Don't make me tell you they're all dead........
I'd rather tell you lies.

On the other side of the house, I saw a milling group of people, most of whom were in scary, white uniforms, carrying a boy out of one of the dingy houses and down to a screaming ambulance. The wail of the white truck was almost as loud but nowhere near as frightened as the piercing cries of the woman who I think must have been his mother. She was running after the people in uniforms, wringing her hands and crying something horrible.
"Aw, it's nothin'."
I jumped as my friend suddenly spoke in my ear. "Whatcha mean?" I demanded. "It looks real bad. What happened?"
"I dunno," she said indifferently. "Guess he got hurt."
A man was holding the hysterical mother back now, yelling something in her ear. She didn't seem to even know he was there. The man handed her off suddenly to a different older man. Then the first man got in the ambulance and shouted something at the woman. Even from where I was I could pick out his words, "Watch the girls!" he yelled to the older man. "Don't let her near 'em!" he jabbed a hand at the sobbing woman.
"Think he'll be okay?" I watched wide-eyed as the van suddenly slammed its doors shut in the young mother's face and went screeching away. The woman dropped to her knees, shaking and howling, and the older man all but dragged her into the house.

You left chemicals within his reach and now it's in his eyes.
I want to say your son will see, not tell you he'll be blind.
You ask me if he'll be OK, with pleading in your eyes.
I want to say that yes he will.....
I want to tell you lies.

I don't particularly remember the rest of that afternoon, except that whenever I tried to ask my friend about the fiasco we had witnessed she would just shrug in a largely unimpressed way and repeat her all-encompassing, "I dunno."
I do remember, however, going home that evening, and asking my dad if bad things like ambulances and crying mothers happened a lot. My father is, in general, not a man to sugar coat things, or to lie. So he simply told me that bad things happen, and good things happen, and that's the way the world works.
But I wasn't happy with that answer, and the next day in school, during reading hour, I asked for books on police and doctors. Some of it was just numbers and watered down stories, but I found enough real stuff to plant a scary idea in my head.
The world wasn't as clean and bright as I had always assumed. Bad things, things like fires and illness, accidents and death occurred every day...and had been occurring for a very long time. All of human history.

You left the cabinet open and your daughter found the gun.
Now you want me to undo the damage that's been done.
You tell me she's your only child, you say she's only five.
I don't want to say she won't see six..........
I want to tell you lies.

It was a bad day, that day when I got home. I read the newspaper, full of foreign countries bombing each other, shifty senators fitted for fraud, a hundred different horrible things in my perfect world, messing it all up and making my new toy look old and ratty. Or even worse, taking away the pretty paint I had always seen and showing me the ugly scars and rust underneath.
Lucky for me, though, that same evening as I was sitting on my porch and feeling horrible about how bad the world was now, how everything I had thought was so brilliant and so clean was really just one big ball of tears and blood and things broken beyond repair - a neighbor of mine across the street came out of her house. She waved to me, and I listlessly flopped a hand back. She stopped, tilted her head to the side, and gestured for me to come across.
I trudged my way over to her yard and stood on the sidewalk, shuffling my feet and feeling ornery and upset and miserable in general.
"Now, what's wrong, sweetie?" she asked.
"Nothin,'" I answered sullenly.
"You sure? Not having a bad day, are you? You look very pouty over there."
Now, no person in any stage of youth likes to be called 'pouty.' Dramatic creatures that we are, we prefer 'desolate,' 'wretched,' 'forlorn,' even just plain 'sad' is better than pouty. I immediately stuck my chin up in the air. "I'm not pouty," I told her defensively. "I'm just thinking, that's all."
"Well, while you think, would you like to help me plant my marigolds?" She pointed to a group of small flowers sitting next to a patch of uprooted dirt.
I shook my head. "No thanks," I replied.
"Well, alright then."
I was about to turn around to walk back to my house, when in the distance I heard sirens again, rushing away down an unseen street.

You didn't put their seat belts on, you feel you killed your kids.
I want to say you didn't ... but in a way, you did.
You pound your fists into my chest, you're hurting so inside.
I want to say you'll be ok......
I want to tell you lies.

I scowled as I listened to the wailings sirens, wondering bitterly what had happened now.
To my total shock, the woman, rather than get upset, smiled and nodded her head to me. "Isn't that a great sound?" She asked me happily.
A great sound? A siren off to some horrific disaster? What was great about it?
She must have seen my bafflement, because she laughed. "They're off to save a life. That's a good thing, isn't it?"
I nodded, and even managed a little smile as I walked back to my own porch, and inside my house. Her words were sifting through my head furiously, and as arrogant and silly as this may sound, I think that right then I had a revelation of sorts.
Sirens and ambulances, doctors, and policemen, all those people were there because bad things happened all the time. But the fact that they were there at all, the fact that someone cared enough to try fix the bad things in the world ...somehow ...that made a difference.
Tragedies happen all the time, across the world. Entire countries starve, people die slowly of diseases because they were too poor to pay for the cure, a little boy goes to the hospital because his mother didn't pay attention. People cry, people bleed, people die.
But at the same time, an old lady plants flowers in her garden, a church collects hundreds of dollars for an orphanage, a teenager feeds the homeless for a day.
My dad's words, so carelessly spoken to appease a curious seven-year-old, are quite possibly the one of the greatest truth in human history. If you learn nothing else from all your years of school; from the jobs you take, the places you go, or the people you meet, then please learn this. Bad things happen, and good things happen, and that's just the way the world works.

But I have to tell it like it is until my shift is through
And I hope you understand I don't like to lie to you.
But just because life has dealt you an unfair amount of pain
It doesn't mean the world is all ugly or insane
You can rise above the ashes, with hope still in your eyes
And with newfound vision learn to see the truth behind the lies.