I recently had surgery and My friend Ash who was looking after me afterward caught me writing this while I was looped out on pain meds and said I had to post it. So, here it is.
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If Things Had Been Different
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There is a print shop in Chicago, as there are many. Above the print shop are a series of apartments. The second floor is home to two young couples and their impending families, the third floor houses three college students and a middle-aged policewoman who smokes too much, brings home strange men often and dreams of endless blue skies filled with a God she's not sure she even believes in anymore. The fourth floor is inhabited by one man, his books and a veritable forest of potted plants. He owns the shop but doesn't enjoy his work, not for years now since his fiancé left. He sleeps and dreams of deserts, mountains, a gun in his hand and feels at home.
Across town there is a bar, in this bar there is a man, at one time he had been a father—not a very good one, but a father none-the-less. He drinks until he forgets the name of the energetic little boy frozen for eternity in the tattered photograph he holds in the hand not occupied by scotch. He'll kill himself tonight, the tenth anniversary of his boy's disappearance. Drink and drink then step in front of an L-train with a smile on his face and tears in his eyes.
On North Side there is a house that no longer feels like a home. The eldest son is soon to be a father, the youngest is losing hope. Wife and Husband climb into bed and hold one another tightly, she will dream of a voice from the empty room across the hall and wake in tears. He will weep with her. Their daughter will find solace in the arms of another man and in the morning she'll put on her plastic smile and make her way home.
On the wall of a police chief's office there is a photo of three young men in fatigues in front of their hastily erected barracks. They are tanned and smiling. Below this, on a shelf is another picture in a silver frame, a young man with gold eyes in dress blues and beside it, on the shelf a triangular dark cherry shadow box containing a meticulously folded flag and in a black box beside it, small and unassuming, like a ring box is the bullet that killed him.
Across the sea, in the desert there is a blue eyed soldier who wears two sets of dog tags and calls himself an assassin.
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I am strangely proud of this… *bawls*
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