burnt-down town

I'm gonna make it up for all of the nursery rhymes

They never really seem to want to tell the truth…

…Tell me, do you really think you go to hell for having loved?

Tell me, enough of thinking everything that you've done is good…

…Making my own way home, ain't gonna be alone

I'm going to a town

That has already been burnt down.

-Rufus Wainwright

She bit her lip with a wicked smile on her face. She’d done something many would think wicked, heathen; sinful. Where did these moral imperatives come from? It wasn’t like she walked around thinking she was a saint. Not believing in hell, other than it being a state of mind, a place on earth, she knew she’d get hers, she’d gotten it - lived it many times before. She didn’t presume to weave tales, skewing her actions into lovely neat stories with happy endings. She accepted that she was imperfect, that happy endings didn’t exist and that her town had burnt down many times before. She’d survived it, building on the shelled-out remains, so she knew she could do it again. She knew she wasn’t alone either; many people lived in the same town. But were they as honest? Some were. For some, it was harder to face what they really were, where they were really living. Burying themselves in nursery rhymes, fearing hell. She knew hell was her own doing, and sure as hell knew the directions to the burnt-down town. At least she knew she wasn’t alone, and wasn’t afraid to admit she’d been there many times before.