July 26, 2005
He looked across the hall, after finally having lifted his eyes from the heavy concentration on his hands upon his lap, and noticed how the walls seemed to drip with beads of invisible cold. Those plain colored walls, not altogether white and not really with a certain color; how they appeared so endless and so confining. The blankness of those walls, undefined, how they matched the beating in his chest. He allowed the pending sigh from deep within that vessel to exhale and circled his surroundings carefully with his darkened eyes. But nothing ever changed.For all the days of confinement within those familiar halls, never had he seen a single change about the place. Each day brought the same feeling of hopelessness, each wall shed a breath of chilling air and each nurse, patterned white and pale, turned on him with the same pitiful and sympathetic eyes. Those eyes which did not know him, those smiles formed from the millions of other moments just like this and how curious he thought they were to even bother. He supposed that here, nothing ever changed.
He was still the master of the down cast stare, daring the floor to split in two and seize him its merciless grasp so that he might disappear into a fathom less nothing. A place where reality could no longer wholly exist and he was not made to understand or comprehend or feel a stupid, goddamned thing. The splintering cracks of the boards of the floor beneath him would pierce and scathe his teenage flesh and at last he would have some sort of feeling. Be it that of pain and wretchedness, agony and shock; at least it would be a formalized emotion full of consequence and obviousness to those who were surrounding him. He would see the relief within his mother's eyes when she knew that her son was finally feeling something through this suffrage.
Yet nothing ever changed.
He could not feign to understand. He could not feign the tears after so much hate had already soaked up all the moister in his heart. He could not pretend to be a body of comfort when his own soul was desperate for the smallest sign of solace. The strength simply could not be mustered, nor the compassion in his visage; not with all the sickness and the death that clearly surrounded him and continually pounded its forceful fist about his face. It was he alone who faired the evil of the walls that dripped with stinging tears of ice, it was he alone who dealt with question after question of each and every unrecognizable face, as though they cared, when they inquired if he was all right and it was he and he alone who could not make the situation change. Nothing could make it better.
This deep and clinging pain. This anger and bereavement. This place so full of emptiness that refused to release its threatening grip. He was here alone.
And yet it was not an acrimony attributed singularly to the sight of death that stole his last ounce of meaning and consideration. It was not the darkness draped upon his father's face which relinquished his ability to feel, nor the walls, though ever closing, which raked a heavy rung upon his heart.
The impartial recklessness of abandonment stayed thick within the walls of his mouth.
If the fucking bastard would have made his exit and never returned in the first place, none of this would have been caught. None of this would have been realized. He would not have had to feel this overwhelming wave of confusion and frustration for he would not have known better in the first place. He could have stayed away.
Instead, he had to make a grand and careless entrance, back into the lives that had learned to deal without him on their own. He had to return only to leave again. This time, with no hope of recourse.
No hope for change.
And all the agony he procured within the innocent hearts of those surrounding him will never be turned or swayed. No empathetic glance, no understanding smile, no warmth of a touch could ever penetrate the virulence and hate which boils under the flesh of those he dared to claim he loved. All that blazes now is a path toward the pain and memory of it all. All that lives is the frustration and the impediment his shadow upon the faces of those he'll never know.
For I am here, too, staring into the eyes which cast the reflection of those hard and gelid walls, a million years ago. I am here, within the horrid complacency of your tread, watching you walk away again with a backwards glance and an outstretched hand that does not reach quite far enough.
But, all in all, you have failed. You have obstructed that which should only be an outpouring of love and happiness, tried to kill it and you have failed.
There is hope for change.
He does not follow in your footsteps and your son does not abandon. And you should see him...
You should see his reaching arms which hold the promise of our future. You should see his gentle smile as he breathes the warmth of the morning sun. You should see him as he touches my heart with the tip of his finger and you should him in my eyes. You should see the tears you've made and you should be here now to feel it all. I believe that you would then understand and you would comprehend and you would have never walked away.
I believe you would be proud.