ALONE | where our hearts sink into the earth.
― I don't want to be alone anymore.
The world had not been kind to us, the boy and the girl, and the souls within.
Made to suffer, minds that were created for this world, they do not sink; they swim.
but...
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CARL
My boots were old. I couldn't tell a soul where they had come from or how long they had laid in my possession, but only that they belonged to me and they were the very pair I owned. Leather fitted boots, the kind that reminded me of the ones worn in Hollywood western movies, they might have once been a sight to see, but now laid as a sight for sore eyes. Every morning was the same routine of grabbing them from the side of my bunk, shoving them onto feet that didn't want to travel the day ahead.
They had carried me far, would continue to carry me as long as they lived on. A size too small, wounds at the heels, I wore them each day without a complaint in me. It was the last thing I wanted, to bother my father for a new pair that would only end up like the ones settled along me. Yet, as I watched the torn boots in the tall grass, how they seemed to disappear into the tangles of weeds, how tight they strained against my ankles, I realized the boots wouldn't dare last a few more months.
Finding a new pair of boots was the least of my problems, but I let the silly inconvenience swallow my mind whole. Oh, anything to push away the real worries of my day, whatever it took to ease the regrets that pounded into my head. The day turned dizzy, a sideways start that reminded me of the day I'd taken my gun from my father's bedside and went out beyond the fences so many weeks ago.
Out into the woods, a label of a savior had been stapled to me as I saved the girl caught in the crease of the world. Only now, I had hurt that same forest floor girl, I hadn't saved her any sorrow like I had that day. In the hours I found myself in, I didn't understand my head and why I let horrid things cross my touch.
Most mornings, my head was an empty place to bare, a void that had trouble keeping grounded. Perhaps I did that to rid the memories and flashes of how it once was before. Yet, during the mornings when we read, I always made sure to focus on the early hours. I opened my mind up and allowed whatever contents the book provided to flow through me. I had never been a fan of novels, ones with long pages and stories high into telling, but Tess made me want to enjoy them.
I watched how the corners of her mouth curled and the light in her eyes blossomed as she explained the books to Patrick and I each week. It was nearly like we had our own librarian, explaining why novels were worth a read, or what made a book unworthy in her eyes. Seeing her becoming comfortable in the company of us, it was a sight I would never forget, one I always wanted to remember; her being happy. Tess wanted to share her books with Patrick and I, and I only wanted to make those mornings easy for her
I didn't hold much of a purpose or meaning within the world as it stood. A son to a broken man, a burden for most years, a bystander to death as it passed me. There was very little that the world had spared for me to conquer, yet Tess had given a job that the world had not; to be a real friend. A caregiver to her books when she wasn't around, a third teammate in our soccer games, her selected company at lunch. I ruined all of those jobs with the mistakes that had been building up, up, up until they overflowed.
