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- 10/28/2016
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Poetry posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
Vignettes - 1. Oh My Son . . .
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Oh my son . . .
Oh my son . . .
. . . I am losing you.
What wicked game has been played on you that would cause you to die before my eyes as you are.
What possible trick could someone have done to take away the life in your eyes and to hollow them out and cast dark rings around them? My beautiful son with your bright hazel eyes just like your mother's.
Is this why you fade? Your mother has been gone a while now. I thought you might have been able to get over it and to cope as best you could. After a year and after some time in therapy, you were able to smile again. But, I know you still grieve. I do, so you must. Sometimes, I still hear you cry out to her in the night like in that first year without her. I still come to you and hold you until the shivering stops. Except that then in the morning you would bounce down those stairs and smile that bright smile for me as if the night before never happened. Such resilience! My strong and brave boy!
Now that smile is gone...I fear never to return.
Who took that smile away from you, my precious son? What force in this dangerous world could do such a thing to you, my bright angel, after you have survived so much?
Ah, just a week ago you were the happiest I had ever seen you! You positively glowed from every pour! That smile I loved, never seemed to leave your sweet face. What could have happened? I can guess. I can guess but that is all I can do. You could never tell me who it was or why this person touched your heart so to light you with that fire I knew myself so well...once. Once before Death claimed it and snuffed it out as a 'test' of me...and of you. So cruel. You were so young and I was so in love...but love does not matter when the wheel of fortune turns and Death makes its claim. God is blind to us, I guess. I continue to go to Church for you, my boy, but for me...I just don't know anymore.
We survived that death, you and I, up to a point or so I thought.
It has been my fault, really. I allowed my pain to form a wedge between us. I drifted away from you too far. I've buried myself in work and in making sure that you get a good education. It's high school already for you. Our time left together is so brief. You'd have been going away soon to college and I wanted you to have what I could give and what you could earn to make a good start there.
My hope was that you could start a life of your own and find happiness in it...for as long as God would let you have it.
But, it seems, I've failed already. You are slipping away! Why? Why? You go to school, but I get calls from your teachers that you no longer turn in homework. Other days you go off and I think you've gone to school, but then I get messages that you weren't at school at all that day. You never ditched school before! Now...it's just like you don't care at all anymore.
I made the terrible mistake of reprimanding you over this last night at dinner. Oh my God! What a frightful fool I was! You weren't even eating, just sitting there...obediently, but in deathly silence. Your eyes cast down at the table in front of you not even seeing it. Gone. Lost...and here I was getting on you for missing a little school when I knew...I KNEW you weren't even close to alright.
I was just so frustrated! I am so scared for you! Why won't you talk to me? Why can't you see that I love you more than my life? You are all I have left!
But, instead I ball you out over nothing. When I saw that dead look in your face and that single tear run down your cheek out of that darkened eye I should have taken you in my arms. I should have run off with you to the nicest place I could find! FUCK school! FUCK my lousy job! FUCK everything if it means I could keep you...from shedding that single tear again.
A tear of obvious despair.
But...the damage was done. You stood, not looking at me and simply turned away and walked up the stairs looking like you carried a cross on your shoulders. A cross you were already nailed to. I called for you to come back to me. I called out that I was sorry! But, you couldn't hear me. I'd say that you wouldn't hear me, but that would be my hurt pride, anger and frustration talking. You couldn't hear me. Whatever hell you were in...was beyond my voice for you to hear.
Wherever you were consigned, you could no longer feel anything but pain and I just made it worse!
You haven't eaten anything in days! You barely drink water. You don't want to live anymore, I see that now. Oh my God but I see it! What can I do? What can I say...to make it all better? I nag you to eat something and you nod...but don't do anything. I place food in front of you and you merely stare at it. My frightened desperation wants me to force your mouth open so I can shove at least some of it down you! This so that you will live! This so you will stop dying!
How can you torture yourself and your father like this? How dare you? How dare you after all we've been through together? How...could you?
Anger. I use it to fight my own despair. It seems somewhat effective until I see that it causes collateral damage so extreme that it isn't worth the energy to use it anymore. It destroys everyone around me and then finally it leaves me to destroy myself.
Anger is not the solution here. It never was. You are a victim of it, I fear, my son. If you only knew that the same feelings you are having I have had too. I wish you could trust me. I wish you could feel how much I love you.
I wish you could feel how much my heart is breaking for you right now! But, then, it looks like you have enough heartbreak of your own going on.
I swear if I find out who's done this to you I'll happily gut them! You are the sweetest of boys and I'm not just saying that because I'm your father. It is a fact proven to me time and again by seeing you with other people, how you care, how you help...how you love! Always the one to go play with the lonely kid in the corner so they won't be alone anymore. The one to pick up the old lady's cane when she drops it and can't pick it up easily. The one to believe that boy scout candy bars can save the world!
When you were just a baby, your mother and I would go out with you and everyone would want to hold you and cuddle you! You were so open and accepting! So full of love that it shined out of that smiling happy baby face like the sun! Your eyes have always been so bright! Bright with the joy of being alive!
They positively sparkled just two weeks ago! I wanted to ask who she was! I wondered if it was the girl at Church. That lovely one! But, no...I saw it had to be someone else. Someone else that you saw on a regular basis that was not her. Your eyes didn't catch fire when they'd barely glance in her direction. I figured it couldn't be her. You can't hide that kind of love!
But...they look like they've gone dead. It’s like your soul is gone! It is like what made you alive has gone dormant. Nothing could be so bad that you can't tell me about what is happening! Nothing! Even if I wanted to...it is obvious that there could be no punishment I could ever think of worse than what you are going through now. Lord in heaven knows I'd NEVER want to do that to anyone much less the love of my heart!
I wish you knew how much I love you! You could never do ANYTHING to make that stop! Don't you know that? I think you used to! I think you used to trust me. You would trust especially me, even over your mother. You trusted me because instead of getting angry I always talked to you. I remember what being a boy was like! I remember how confusing things could get! I remember how especially hard it was to follow the Church's impossible rules they made for men to live by. When I matured, I finally discarded what I knew I could never obey. I became a 'Cafeteria Catholic'. You have to if you are going to survive in this faith. They leave no other way for a man to do it.
If that's what is hurting you then PLEASE talk to me! I know you haven't taken Communion in WEEKS now! I don't want to intrude on that part of your life. It is between you and God, but now I am in agony not knowing! No burden of God's should ever drive a boy of fifteen into this kind of despair! You need to believe that! He wants to help...never hurt!
Yet...he did take my beloved wife and your dear mother from us and then the Church expects us to shoulder that as God's Will! I swear I'd love to watch some of these Priests burn in hell for saying cold things like that! They have NO love in them!
Was it a bad Confession? Was it that stupid new Priest that put this yolk on your shoulders? Is THAT the fucker who did this to you? I...would happily burn him at the stake for that! How DARE he! Yet, you haven't asked me to take you to Confession for months now. So...I don't think that's it. It might be some of it, but it’s not all of it.
Oh my God, WHAT is it? What is wrong? You stay in your room all day and I can hear you sob! Oh Jesus God! What would make you sob like that? Tell me! TELL ME! Help me to save you from whatever it is or at least comfort you in my arms until the shaking stops! I know how to give you strength! Everything you are feeling, I've felt! I can help! I CAN!
What could possibly be so bad that you can no longer trust me? I saw some of that trust fade after you and your friend Joseph parted ways. I knew something happened there. You weren't the same after that. You were very careful and you shut down. You managed to get through the bullying in grade school, but something else happened there with Joseph. You no longer made friends! You started playing your video games and not going out anymore. You talk to people we meet in other countries more than you do to people here in your own town.
Ah...oh God. I've been so bad lately. I've not let you help me with any trips coming up. You aren't involved anymore in anything I do. I'm so sorry! I don't know when that stopped happening. It should never have! I loved when you'd work with me on my itinerary! Even at eight years old you had that marvelously analytical and organized mind of your mother's! You both made my life so much easier going on my trips! I was so thrilled that you made friends where we went. It was amazing how well you fit in over in England. I even considered moving there...just so you could be happier there.
Happier. Oh how I wish I could make you happier! It’s all I want for you, my son! Whoever you are! Whatever you want to do! However you want to be! It would be so ok with me! I don't care! So long as you smile again! So long as the tears can stop and the life return to you!
You are my everything! You are why I breathe and continue fighting on day after day. Don't leave me like this! Don't go away! I don't want to read any letters saying you want to disappear from the world completely! I will go crazy! I'd become a howling madman! You have no idea, Honey! You have no idea the pain that would cause me!
I watch you sleep, you know. I hope that doesn't seem creepy. I'd watch you sleep and that used to be the greatest part of my day. To see the absolute peace of your innocent face as you dreamt dreams of whatever made you happy. You'd smile...even in your sleep! Oh how beautiful that was!
Even if you told me you were Gay, it wouldn't mean anything. It is just the way you would be. The way God set you. No sins. No condemnations. I love you as you came to me and I would never want to change you. Yes, I know about your grandfather and your uncle. That had nothing to do with your uncle being Gay but my father being an idiot and my brother being overly dramatic. Your uncle won't see either of us now. I can understand Dad but not me. I love my brother. I always knew what he was. I guess I should have spoken up that we shouldn't care about that, but my Dad...he's from another time.
Your Grandad actually wants to see your uncle in the worst way. He misses his older son. He finally understands that being Gay is no reason not to love someone.
I most certainly get that. So...if that's it. If that's what's got you down...trust in your old man! I know more than you probably think I do and my love, it doesn't stop for anything...especially not for something as dumb as homophobia.
Oh....Brandon! Have I only let you down? I wish we could lay side by side like when you were small and I could tell you stories again. I wish you'd let me back in.
Oh God my beautiful Brandon....please let me in!
Please let me see you smile once again!
Your ever loving father,
Brian
A vignette from Brandon Smiling: From the Chronicle of Billy Chase
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Poetry posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
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