marta’s Reviews > Martyr! > Status Update

The performance of certainty seemed to be at the root of so much grief. (...) The genesis of everyone's pain had to be external (...) and so legislators legislated, building border walls...
"The pain we feel comes from them, not ourselves," said the banners, and people cheered, certain of all the certainty.
But the next day they'd wake up and find that what had hurt in them still hurt.

"(...) the men sent into battle with keys around their necks, keys to heaven they're told, and some of them not even men yet, it must be said, some of them boys with men's names (...), children walking around puffed up like men in men's clothes and men's names, as if the names made them men, as if wearing a man's boot could..."