The Last Yielded Hope

“I don’t know what it's for anymore I'm not even sure If there is anyone Who is in the sun Can you help me to understand? Cause I've been caught in between All I wish for and all I need. Or maybe you're not even sure What it's for Any more than me.” Bryan rolled over. The lyrics are loud in his ears and thoughts of surrendering become his only friend. Staring at and trying to escape into the posters on his wall makes him feel infinite. He finds his tourniquet by finding music, and by becoming the people in the posters -- redeemed by their own lyrics. He remembers the quote of a wise man who once said, Stories ask for endings, but songs are brave things, bold enough to sing when all they know is darkness… This is his gospel. He hears his dad cooking dinner downstairs, obviously alone. It has just been he and his dad for a while now. That Heartless Beast drove his wife away. He was so cold, always so cold to her. Why was he that way? Why is anybody that way to someone they once swore their life to? Bryan pulled the sheets up over his head, moaned, swung his legs over the edge and forced himself up out of bed. Surrender can wait another day. It'll surely get better… Walking downstairs and into the kitchen, and removing his hands from his pockets, he grabbed a carrot from the serving platter and stood leaned over the counter, fingering a pen around on the marble, and avoiding eye contact with his father. “Hey B, nap well?” Dad advocated small talk as their primary mode of communication. “Fine,” Bryan mumbled. He grabbed his tattered hoodie and headed for the door. “Where are you going?” yelled the Martinet’s voice from the kitchen. The only reply he got was the understood hatred that came with the slamming of the front door. Bryan made his way to his uncle Jason’s house, unfortunately a relative on his dad’s side. “How could such a rotten guy have such a cool brother?'' he wonders. Uncle Jason is Bryan’s sanctuary, his confidant, and his one true friend. He tells him everything, even about how upset he is, and how much anger he has towards his dad. Jason is one of those people who understands, feels music, and relates to Bryan in every way that he desires. He doesn’t even seem to be bothered by the fact that Bryan hates his dad. Jason just reassures him that his brother really is a good guy and that people make mistakes. People make mistakes, but the way Bryan looks at it, his dad must have made some mistakes over, and over, and over again. Some people don’t deserve forgiveness. Bryan gets to Jason’s house and walks in the side door that opens to the laundry room. He walks through to the living room and spots the new Coldplay album on the coffee table. He picks it up and twiddles it between his fingers, glancing over front and back covers. He moves his unkempt, scraggly brown hair out of his eyes and glances up to see Jason in the doorway. “Heard their new stuff yet?” Jason asked. “Pretty legit. Speaks a bee-line to the soul.” “Nah, overrated.” Bryan sets it back. Jason chuckled with a smirk. “Have a seat. Show me the latest.” Jason dug through his raggedy jean-pocket and pulled out a torn out yellow sheet of paper from a legal pad. He held it uneasily for a bit and folded it a couple times over in his hand. His eyes peered over to Jason. “Give it here, man, seriously.” He tossed it over. Jason slowly unfolded it, careful not to rip the worn seams. You could tell the paper had been worked a few times over. Is it bad that I’ve become an expert at hiding tears, Because the pain is so deep, They can’t reach my eyes? Is it bad that I want to starve But not notice that I’m giving up Because that only means I am weak? Is it bad that sometimes I turn the heat all the way off Because the numbing seems to bring some sort of pleasure? Is it bad that my life seems to hit every red light So I question daily the person that I am. Or is it even worse that I’m starting not to care? Is it bad that I pray sometimes that I’m someone’s prayer? Because it seems like my prayers alone don’t work? Is it bad that sometimes I close my eyes for so long And I forget the painful fact that I’m still living? Is it bad that I wish I didn’t have feelings, Because the only ones I feel Make me cry? Is it bad that I ask God to plant me in a dream Because I feel like I have no reason To wake up in the morning? Everything is meaningless. He was quiet for a minute. Bryan could tell that he felt uneasy. “Damn, dude,” Jason finally sighed. “That’s deep stuff. You doin’ okay?” He looked worried. “Yeah, I’m fine.” Bryan brushed away his hair. “I write darker than I am, for real. “Why?” “The sad stuff just means more to people, you know? It’s like, people can connect to it. Anybody, no matter what they’ve been through or what they haven’t; everyone hurts somewhere. People live primarily out of their pain, and most of the time they don’t even realize it.” “Yeah, but…. Geez, I don’t know…you’re just a kid. Seventeen years old, man, you shouldn’t be thinking like this. Hell, I’m 34 and I’ve never thought a thing this depressing in my whole life.” Jason was rubbing his chin and leaning forward, intensity in his voice and concern in his eyes. “This poem doesn’t have a hint of hope in it. It speaks to people, you’re right, but offers no helping hand.” “If you can speak to people’s pain, you can change them,” Bryan replies. “No one ever got anywhere with anyone by talking about how amazing butterflies are. And besides, it’s just a poem, dude, chill. I gotta let out somewhere. Quit worryin’, I only show you this stuff cause I trust you to not wig out.” Bryan was regretting showing him this one. Jason had been reading Bryan’s work for a couple of years now. When your dream is to be a poet, you’ve got to have a critic. “I’m not wigging out, I just don’t want you to have your mind in places that think like this. It’s incredibly depressing. Do you really feel this way? How are things doing at home since we last talked about it? I’m sorry, bud, but when you show me a piece like this, I’m gonna dig a little bit.” Jason sat back. It had been a couple weeks since they’d discussed the Heartless Beast. “Same. He’s still a bastard. I mean, he’s still the same as always. You can’t forgive someone like him. In one year, I’ll be out. Just one more year. I’ll go to college in Pheonix, away from Houston, and close to mom. She needs me.” “Your mom is a strong woman, Bryan, she’s doing fine, I’m sure.” Jason is trying. “I’ve gotta make sure. When you’ve lived and been sucked into a life as bad as the one she must have had with him, you’re never healed I bet.” Bryan pushes. He will win this argument. “I disagree. So my brother treated her bad, it was over a year ago, she’s over it by now. Trust me.” Jason seemed confident enough. They hadn’t had a conversation like this in a few months. “Whatever,” Bryan muttered. “Let’s just get some dinner or somethin’.” They ate dinner and talked about philosophy, about battling religions and about life. They talked about Baghdad. Bryan feeds off of Jason’s wisdom. There is something about his uncle that is so appealing. There are no boundaries in this friendship. Jason tells Bryan when he thinks he is wrong or overreacting, and Bryan, even though he may not show it, always entertains Jason’s advice. They finish up with some coffee about midnight and Bryan hops in his beat-up Ford and heads back to the Dungeon. The Tyrant was reading in the red chair in the living room when Bryan walked through the door. “You know I hate it when you visit him,” His father looked up from his book. He knew where Bryan had gone. “My brother is a hateful man, B, I don’t want you over there, you hear me? I’m tired of him putting ideas and lies into your head.” Bryan’s dad took off his glasses and put down his book. His grey mustache was catching a flicker in the lamp. Bryan often thought the moustache of Satan probably looked somewhat like his fathers. Bryan breathed in. “He’s more of a father than you ever will be, Dad.” he stared at his father full of hatred and anger; stared right at his broken father. “B, you do not know what you are talking about,” he rose up out of his chair and walked towards Bryan. “Stop, don’t you come near me, don’t you DARE come near me!” He was yelling now and he didn’t even know why. Why was this anger surfacing, why now? “You drove her away, Dad, she left,” he screamed. “You told her to leave, and she LEFT. Why? Why did you stop loving her? Why was she so miserable with you that you both felt you couldn’t fix things? What did you do, God damnit!?” He was on fire now, in his father’s face, with tears in his eyes, my God, he had never acted this way, he had never yelled this way. Never had he shown his father that he hated him so. “Bryan you don’t know, you really don’t know…” His dad was crying now, a lump in his throat and he reached his arm out to take a hold of Bryan. “No!” Bryan raged. “WHY? TELL ME WHY!” His father was stammering. He sank back down, back into his chair. He looked up at Bryan. His voice shaking, still formed the words to tell him, finally, so that he might understand. “She was sleeping with Jason. For months, she’d been having an affair with him…” his true words trailed off into Bryan’s spinning world. So Bryan wrote another poem. Another poem to show the world what he believes about it. One last poem, symbolic of what we all discover once we leave our innocence and search for something deeper within reality. But sometimes, we never do find what we are looking for. Once on a yellow piece of paper with blue lines she wrote a poem And she called it “Charlie” because that was the name of her puppy and that’s what it was all about And her teacher gave her an A and a pat on the back And her mother hung it on the kitchen fridge and read it to all her friends That was the year Father Bill took all the kids to the musical and he let them sing on the bus And her little brother was born with tiny toenails and blue eyes And her mother and father kissed a lot And the boy around the corner sent her a card with X’s and O’s and she had to ask her mother what the X’s meant And her father always tucked her in bed at night And was always there to do it. Once on a piece of white paper without lines she wrote a poem And she called it “December” because that was the name of the month And that’s what it was all about And her teacher gave her an A and asked her to write more structured And her mother never hung it on the fridge because of the new paint And the kids told her That Father Bill smoked a pipe And left ashes in the pews and sometimes they left burns That was the year her brother got braces and glasses with black rims And the girl around the corner laughed When he asked her to go see a movie And the kids told her why Her father and mother kissed a lot And her father never tucked her in bed at night And her father got mad when she cried for him to do it. Once on a piece of paper torn from her notebook She wrote a poem And she called it “Innocence” because that was the question about her boy and that’s what it was all about And her professor gave her an A and a wondering uncertain expression And her mother never hung it on the kitchen fridge because she never showed her That was the year Father Bill died and she forgot all the words of the Nicene Creed And she caught her brother making out in his truck And her mother and father never kissed or even talked And the boy across the street was aggressive when she kissed him but she kissed him anyway because that was the thing to do And at 3 a.m. she tucked herself into bed her father snoring loudly That’s why on the back of her closet door she tried carving a poem And she called it “Empty & Meaningless” Because that’s what it was really all about And she gave herself an A and a slash on each damned wrist And she hung it on the bathroom door because this time she didn’t think she could reach the kitchen.