here comes a bucket of feels.
warning: you might cry
of gunfire and bullet wounds
War means nothing to him anymore. But, at the same time, it means everything.
I hate sitting here, watching him. I hate watching him struggle, watching him deal with it inside of himself, watching him become someone he's never been. It's daunting; terrifying, really.
But despite it, despite everything, we don't push him to talk. Something we probably should do, but don't out of respect for him and in order to not have him lash out again.
"He's gonna be fine," Darry tells me every morning as I leave for school. I've done nothing but walk this entire year; half so that Darry doesn't have to go out of his way to drop me off and half so that I can just think to myself. "He's gonna be okay today."
Today is the word that sticks in my head, like cancer. It sits there, begging to be thought about, to be brought up, to make me weak. It's today; today.
It's never tomorrow, or the next day, or the next. It's always today as if tomorrow will never come. As if our brother, our sensible, kind-hearted brother, is only okay for today. Never tomorrow, never the next day.
Always, undoubtedly, today.
Today sucks ass. I want a tomorrow. I want a yesterday. I want a day before that and a day before that.
I want years before. I want seconds, hours, lifetimes before. I want him to be okay for the rest of his life, not just today.
Every day, I find him standing outside when I walk up the driveway. And every day, the pain shines in his eyes just as brightly as the sun does in mine, and I have to squint in order to see him. I see the emotional baggage he wears like a second skin, like a cloak, and it always brings him to tell me the same thing:
"I'm okay, Ponyboy. I'm okay."
And every time he says that, I cry, and he holds me so tightly, so strongly, that I imagine him in that battlefield, holding someone that same way. I imagine him crying as I always do, imagine him screaming to the heavens as he always does.
And every time, I know he means it. A little more each day, and for today, and all the today's after, I hope that stays.