Every man has a thing. It lives somewhere beneath his ribs, curled around his spine, breathing when he breathes. He might try to remember where it came from, but it’s always been there. It came with the body. The thing is a thing of power, maybe even violence. Some men let their thing loose, and they learn what it can do. How it can hurt. How it can create fear. They spend the rest of their lives trying to un-loose it.
Other men suffocate their thing. They heard stories. They saw what happened to the men who let theirs loose. So they wrapped tight coils around it while it was sleeping. It’s been in coils ever since.
But a chained thing is still a thing. It doesn’t disappear. It doesn’t die. It waits. He feels it pull against the knots when someone threatens what he loves. He feels it twist and writhe when injustice goes unanswered. The thing wants out. It always wants out. And the man who keeps it in has to decide, every day, to keep it in. Anyone can let the thing loose. It takes nothing. It takes everything to keep it inside.
The world sees a gentle man. It doesn’t see the thing. It doesn’t see the knots of rope. It thinks gentleness is the absence of violence. It’s not. Gentleness is violence. Violence against the thing.