The Boy Fishing On The Moon

9.

It was the night of a new moon.

The boy sat in front of the candle lit table.

He stared at the candles as they did their little dances on the stick of wax. He watched them occasionally collide and dance with one another as people walked past the table. 

He sat in between his aunt and uncle as they talked to everyone that came by. 

The boy heard all the low voices around him and all the people dress in black, looking back at him, with a look of sorrow or empathy. 

The boy could only think about the matching coffins he saw his mother and father lay in earlier that day. 

He thought of her mothers glowing skin that turned as white as his hospital sheets.

He thought of his fathers loud roaring that was finally silenced.

Every guest and every condolence he recieved couldn't seal in all the breaking he felt his heart was doing. One by one. And it seemed like it would put itself back together just to break down again.

The boy got up from his table and began walking around between the people. He had to use so much energy just to do that. Just to smile at everyone and look at them as they held him or touched him. 

The boy was just drained.

He stopped walking and began looking down at a plant and played with the leaves. He scratched them and pulled at them until they all fell into the pot. His mind was drifting in and out and the boy still couldn't seem to get a grasp of if he was dreaming or not.

The boy heard every word people would say or ask him. 

But he wouldn't speak. He was tongue tied. He couldn't speak, his young mind could barely process any words to explain how he feels, nor did he know how he felt.

He was gathered by Melissa and her family and he saw her keep her small eyes on him the whole time and he just stared at her without a smile or a grin. He looked at her like she didn't know. Like she didn't understand the pain he was feeling. And no emotion could help him cope.

No one could help him cope. No one saw his family falling apart as their last days together. No one heard his cries as their car was skidding off the road. No one saw the marks he left on him and his mother. 

He wondered if his father felt guilty. As guilty as the boy felt about starting the fire. He wondered if his father felt it eating him alive and it was why he finally apologized. 

All the pain he felt. All the fear. All the gasping for air through his blubbering under the kitchen counters or under tables or behind doors. All the fury that would go through his fathers body and stare the boy right in the face. He tried to remember, he tried to remember the good times to help him cope. His father said he was sorry, he said he forgave him.

But it still hurt. It was all left in him like broken glass. It was all that he had left. The memories. 

Social workers leaned down to talk to him, they all said words and sentences that went in one ear and out the other. The boy knew what they were all saying without listening. And he was ready.

He was ready for a new start. He was ready to try to do anything he could to forget the memories. He was ready to let go. He seen what a it was like to live with a broken family and he saw what tore it apart. He felt everything a boy his age should never feel and it was all taken away too quick and the worst way he could imagine. He would never forget it. He needed to learn from it. He needed to learn what to never do. 

When he loved someone, don't let them hurt you.

When someone loved you, don't hurt them.

When you're fighting your own demons, don't hurt yourself. Don't change yourself. Don't try to fix whats not broken. 

'Cause it takes from the moon and back to forgive and forget. 

This is the story of a boy who came to only count on something 238,900 miles away from him. 

This is the story of a boy who got a new home on the night of a new moon.

And this concludes my report on the psychiatric study of this boy, his mother, and the man.