Dickheads shit-talk huddled and single-file. First-world frat-boys and prairie skinheads who will never walk a mile or mourn a murdered friend in this tiny woman's shoes. Drink up and mumble your abuse. I'm still humbled by it all: around the same time that i was riding with no hands, busting windows and getting busy behind the sportsplex (with Labonte's older sister decked out in her Speedos), Bella was flinching from the sting of a Depo Proveran "family planning", her own Pearl Harbour and a holocaust spanning 25 years to the rest of her life. A prison my country underwrote in paradise. And in the shadows of Santa Cruz, she crossed her fingers behind her back. Built Suharto a Trojan horse and lay still till the motherfucker sent her north where as night fell she emerged with a box under her arm that held her pledge of allegiance and her uniform. She laid it at the gates of the General's embassy and her whisper echoed into dawn as she disappeared:

The truth will set my people free.