I thought, in that instant, that I understood exactly what cruel and sordid transaction I was looking at.

I thought I had it.

I did not have it.

I had, in fact, understood almost nothing, and the small ugly thing I believed I was looking at was about to be turned completely inside out, into something so much larger and so much more painful and so much more good that I would spend the rest of my life ashamed I had ever screamed.

That scream is the thing I would take back, if I could take back one moment from that night.