Dan Cardoza writes

He Gave Up The Waiting  

1

When you were a child, I watched you from a tall Sycamore shadow outside the play yard at McHenry Elementary. Your dark eyes always bent toward the pavement, the dead.

You stand in a shadow too, only it’s made by you. You murmur, as if speaking to someone underground, gesture intermittently. The other kids tease you; throw twigs and small rocks, as they press you further into the darker hues of shade.  Cruelty follows you everywhere, a musky condensation, making it difficult for your lungs to lift, fall.

The joyful laughter of others always just out of reach, the kind never shared at home where you endure in your grim carnival of silence.  A silence only broken by the sounds you make while speaking to yourself or someone you know in your head, in a language you solely comprehend, distinct dialects of hurt, pain.

2

The cigarette burns on your back heal; yet yield to the scars on your heart now webbing their lifelong sinuous thrum.

The years pass, yet keep you. I was told that you dwelt in your room, alone. That your bedroom drapes were never opened in over fifteen years. I imagine dusty sunlight leaking from the seams of your shredded curtains, always relenting to the right shade of hidden.

Of course, all the warning signs were there. That one day you would grow tired of your existence & for just about any reason, use a handgun to end the assumed misery you see in the eyes of just about anyone. 

One day is where your dream and my nightmare fuel each other, explode.

Your cell door has always been open, patiently awaiting your touch, even before you were born. A touch unwanted by family & friends.  In your pain, you see your hands as decaying flesh, not fit for the holding of others, yourself, yet they bloom open, yield to the soothing cool contact of the chipped green bars.

 

3

I visit you on Sundays when you seem calmer, never talking. We both like it that way. I know you don't mind my visits because they're mainly for me. You have not refused our interaction, so far.

When I depart after a few hours, I drag your clumsy heart ghost out the cell door chained to my ankle. With the sound of a granite mortar and pestle, I limp, tug the heavy weight of emptiness down the corridor, then out through the prison gate where it acts to float, like a radish red Japanese candle kite.

I stop, shake it loose, glove fit tight into my car where I slump against the seat belt. I hear the car door slam & obsess who needs the company of the other. As I drive away, I glimpse the floating red dot against the blue sky in the rear view. Again, I convince myself that next Sunday, I will tell you I am your father.

Prison cell -- Bob Farquar