Elementary school teaching was simply not my calling. I knew this, and I knew this damn well. I don't even know why I agreed to sub, but international relations, and all that. Best not to piss off too many people… sorta. At least the day's focus was mostly on American History, a subject which I can say I completely fucking rock at. Just sayin'. Cause it includes talking about myself, a topic that just comes naturally to me.

"The flag you know today," I lectured, completely ignoring the fact that I was talking to ten year olds, which have a tendency to spontaneously combust at someone other than themselves talking for over five minutes on one subject. I was focusing mainly on not blowing their brains out at the moment, so that little detail was more or less irrelevant to my sanity. But soon enough, I told myself, I would be in my element. And sure enough, my words sped up, increasing in passion as my speech went on. "Has a symbolic sort of thing going on, right? Red is hardiness, and valor, white is purity and innocence, and blue is vigilance, perseverance, and… justice!"

"Mr. Jones?" A boy piped up from the back of the room, half-hiding behind his binder. I nodded, looking at him in a way that I hoped wasn't too quixotic. I knew his type. (One lived with me for a while. Toris, that is.) The littlest thing could set them off, and I was most certainly not in the mood for a crying pre teen today.

"Yes?" I spoke, my voice lowering to a calmer state.

"I see the flag differently," he began, barely above a whisper. I strained to hear him, taking cautious steps closer. "More of a… painful thing, if that makes sense. So, let's say red is for blood, scrape or bullet wood, whatever. White is for the souls, or the color someone turns when they're no longer breathing… the color of the outside of the eyes. Blue is for their lips, or the oceans that the people on ships cross. But what about the things you can't see, the things that don't go away? My grandpa was in the army, there's pain there that I can't see. I like to call them mind bruises, because every time you touch them, it hurts. I can tell it hurts him a lot. That's why I think there should be another color on the flag: purple. Because those hurt just as much as any scar, or so my Grandpa says. In the way you said earlier, purple could stand for… for… for heroism! Do you agree?" By the end of his speech, he was practically screaming, his expression elated. He looked my straight in the eye, waiting for a reply.

I arched an eyebrow, no longer paying attention to measuring my reactions. Red, white, and blue, that's the way it's always been. Purple would be... out of place at best, preposterous at worst. "Really?"

"Yes," he nodded, voice rising as he went on. "I'm sure you have mind bruises too, all adults do. All of us do. We just have to overcome them, right? That's what you think America is, right? Strength, heroism?"

"You're a smart one," I replied, as I fought back memories. Arthur… the memory of a musket between my eyes as the rain poured down, how it feels when a certain object, words can trigger a flashback, and the sting that still lingers in after shock. Even years later, the pain feels the same…

So I stared at him, and started to think.

The wounds I couldn't see, the memories of war, and the drift that would forever be between Arthur and I… my 'mind bruises.' Though they are not gone, I have found, despite all, that I am able to love him, in disregard of those memories. I am not a sensatory person by any means, but perhaps, if I had to give that pain a color, it would be purple.