Remember the Lost Boy

I

As the rain crashes down, thunder rolls above,

A Silhouette can be seen roaming the streets of Donaghmede,

Hands tucked into the pockets of a long, black overcoat,

The white NY sign on His hat the only bright mark He carries,

His steps are slow and deliberate, as wandering thoughts

Make Him wander physically, searching for a place to call home,

A real home, where people understand He is not what they think;

As the water hits His face, cutting like jagged jewels,

And as His eyes recoil and retreat behind the black walls that are His eyelids,

He stops outside the place He has called home for so many years,

And stares, loathingly, with red eyes that once were a shade of innocent blue,

At the stone that no longer can contain and restrain Him from the world;

He pierces Mother’s window with those cold, cruel and calculating eyes,

Knowing that right now, as the raindrops crash against Her window pane,

She lies awake, tossing and turning, torturing Herself with the knowledge of His absence,

Hoping hopelessly that this is all a terrible nightmare that will end soon,

With Her waking up and seeing the sun and Her son mingling on His bedspread;

Outside, the rainfall becomes a monsoon, stabbing the Silhouette all over,

And hail begins its descent, crashing to the ground, attempting to move the shadows,

Which stand resolutely still, the Silhouette at their head,

Who’s clenched fist and unwavering gaze strikes fear into His own reflection in the puddles,

Flowing like rivers into the drains of Donaghmede, where the rats lie;

The seeds of the Silhouette’s hatred were sown in the dark of Winter,

They now begin to flourish in the lengthening of the days and the increasing light of Spring,

With nights like tonight, raging and rampaging, the fertiliser for its continued growth,

And the Summer the forecasted period for completion of a transformation irreversible,

For hatred consumes the Silhouette like the raindrops that have soaked Him to the bone,

Bringing not even a flinch or flicker of recognition in His eyes;

The Silhouette drops a picture at His garden’s gate, before going inside,

No one will ever see the person in the picture as they are framed there ever again,

A note scribbled on the picture’s back reads:

‘Remember the lost boy’…

II

Morning.

Her eyes open suddenly as the horridness of the nightmare crashes around Her.

They widen as She cannot distinguish between nightmare and reality.

She finds herself tangled amongst Her bedclothes.

Tossing and turning for all hours of the night have trapped Her in Her own home.

She escapes and pulls the curtains back with such ferocity they rip clean off.

Sunlight.

Not content, She sprints to Her son’s bedroom.

She bursts through the door and relief cleanses all the fear.

The sun and Her son mingle on His bedspread; He sleeps still.

It was all a nightmare, not a grain of truth.

She ignores the wet ground as She brings the bins outside.

The sun shines gloriously overhead, bringing a smile to Her lips.

She used to sit and simply gaze at the sky for hours, such was Her love of the things above.

What looks like a piece of paper catches Her eye on the ground.

She picks it up and knows it for a picture.

Her hand shakes and Her mouth utters nothings as She recognises Her son.

Young. Innocent. Clear, blue eyes.

This picture is from His wallet.

She turns it over and reads the message several times.

‘Remember the lost boy’…

Something suddenly brushes by Her.

She reaches out to grab Her son’s shoulder.

He shrugs Her off and turns.

She cannot comprehend who She is seeing.

His eyes are nothing more than sockets.

Bags on bags. Black as coal. Empty as space.

His face is weathered and worn.

The cracks which once only appeared when He smiled are now permanent

(even though He did not smile much these days).

He turns away without uttering a word.

Mother bursts into tears.

‘Remember the lost boy’…

III

As disguises fall away, people will ask,

Remember how He used to be?

As masks splinter, people will ask,

Remember who we thought He was?

As belief seeps through the cracks, people will ask,

Remember the past, the real past?

As faith breaks, people will ask,

Remember the lost boy who once had a heart?

An ending always had to be written,

A goodbye always needed to be told,

A confession always had to be made,

A foundation always needed to hold…

But it didn’t.

Now parting is a necessity surpassing sweet sorrow.

And as the truth comes to light, people will ask,

Remember how He used to be?

And as a harsh lesson is learned by all, people will ask,

Remember who we thought He was?

And as the revelations of The Game are revealed, people will ask,

Remember the past, the real past?

And as the broken lovers come forward, people will ask,

Remember the lost boy who once had a heart?

The fighting always had to stop,

The pen always needed to retire,

The end always had to be bitter,

The present always needed to transpire…

And it did.

Now goodbye is the only thing left to say.

And Mother’s tears flowed as freely as Niagra after seeing this written in His room.

One hundred times on the wood underneath his mattress.

Carved.

The knife rested at His bedside.

Blunted from the one hundred successes and the thousand failures.

She looked at the picture again.

‘Remember the lost boy’…

IV

The Owl stares at the Silhouette intently,

Sizing it up, wondering if this shadow of a person wandered alone purposely,

The Silhouette sits under the Owl’s tree, shielding Himself from the reigning rain,

Ceaseless in the days since He left home,

Not home, it was never His home;

The Owl’s glassy gaze is unwaveringly still,

Even as the pigeons rustle in their anti-nocturnal sleep,

Even as the rain splashes and soaks the surrounding leaves,

And even as the leaves succumb to the weight of the drops

And are ripped away by the whispering wind, that howls occasionally,

When the Earth wants to make a point;

The Owl cannot help but marvel at the Silhouette’s extraordinary stillness

(not a single movement since He first took his place, more than ten hours ago),

The Owl cannot fathom why the Silhouette is under Its tree,

The Owl cannot understand why the Silhouette is under any tree,

The Owl cannot guess why the Silhouette is not inside those places people live,

The Owl cannot see why the Silhouette does not take advantage of those things humans call ‘beds’;

The Silhouette breaks into a coughing fit now,

The Owl flinches at the sudden movement,

And It wonders why it is that this person is in exile,

For that is the only logical reason as to why He sits down there now,

Alone in the rain, huddled into His own jacket in a futile attempt to contain

The little non-existent warmth He imagines Himself to have;

Coughing and coughing, He keels over side-ways the force takes so much from Him,

And there He drifts into an uneasy stupor,

Not sleep, for sleep is impossible in the reigning rain and the whispering wind,

Each drop is like a plunging knife, but each whisper of the wind?

Each whisper is like a sweet nothing from someone you love,

And this makes his stupor slightly easier, or so it seemed to the Owl,

Who had no concept of love and knew only what It had learned from voyeurism of people,

A species, the Owl concluded tonight, upon seeing the Silhouette,

That had no regard for its peers as a collective,

With each individual believing him or her self to be a society in themselves,

Something the Owl thought highly amusing.

V

I am seven years old.

The back garden of a house in Clonskeagh is my arena.

My tricycle is unstoppable. I fall off, but land in the grass.

I laugh. A sensation in my knee makes me stop.

Odd at first. Numbing. I look at my knee.

A black and yellow bottomed bee. It had stung me.

Then, I scream. Then, I cry. Then, my grandmother fixes the damage.

‘Aren’t you a brave boy?’

A part of me grows, at least in hindsight.

I am ten years old.

My father is walking with me. The sun shines. He carries a football.

I see the brown building. The depth of the blocks terrifies me.

It is like an institution. We are just going to play football, he says.

I train with the team. The manager informs me of my likeness to breakfast for others.

Rejection at the age of ten. The shame.

A part of me breaks away, at least in hindsight.

I am twelve years old.

My father and I are standing in a sea of green and white.

At the edge of the highest tier in a place I have only been once,

But that feels more like home than anywhere I have ever been.

We laugh as the goals come like a speeding train and as the opposing flares die out.

Tangerine never stood a chance and I feel a part of something bigger.

A part of me grows, at least in hindsight.

I am thirteen years old.

Rain and tears are mixing in the cold January morning.

My father has committed the greatest sin in my brief history.

He left, when he did not need to. He left, when he did not have to.

And now we bury his body underground.

But the questions cannot be buried.

They cannot be answered either.

Others cry. I do not cry. I cannot cry. Emotion evades me.

A part of me dies, at least in hindsight.

I am fifteen years old.

A young upstart nutmegs me. I kick him into the air.

And onto a hospital bed.

I cry. I cannot control the Temper.

A part of me breaks away, at least in hindsight.

I am eighteen years old.

Having another to hold and truly call my own happens for the first time.

We lie side-by-side, feet pointing in opposing directions and kiss for the first time.

The following two months are some of the best I have ever known.

Smiles only began to falter when circumstance interfered.

A part of me grows, at least in hindsight.

I am eighteen and nineteen simultaneously.

Five women, five different times, bunched, suffocating.

As I progress through each, I lose the ability to feel more and more.

Until, finally, I get to the most recent conquest. Nothing.

I know nothing. I feel nothing. I wish to feel nothing.

The final inch has vanished. All morality has evaporated.

Circumstances of each loss have combined to rob from me something I was once much appreciated for.

A part of me dies, in present sight.

Circumstance has no set time.

It has interfered and interfered. And it will interfere again.

It robbed me of five women (only two of which I truly cared for).

It robbed me of my father (which I only learned in the years after he was stolen).

It will rob me of my future. Because that is circumstance.

It compromises for nobody. Not for reputations. Not for money. Not for love.

Not for nobody.

VI

The Silhouette’s uneasy stupor brought with it flashes of images past

(and perhaps future),

He makes a mental note of them all, for writing is a passion of His,

And while He may not have his best weapon now,

In time, He will find some paper and a pen and write all that He has seen,

Or hopes to see.

And all the while the Owl notes Its own images,

The image of the Silhouette oh so still for ten hours straight,

The image of the Silhouette’s sudden coughing fit,

The image of the Silhouette drifting into the most uncomfortable of stupors,

The image of the Silhouette drenched, shaking, and lost,

The Owl would always remember the night the Silhouette stayed under Its tree.

The Owl would always remember the lost boy…

VII

It’s a boy, blue eyes, a little tuft of blonde hair,

He wasn’t crying, but cooing, curiously,

His small hand attempting to wrap around Mother’s index finger,

But not managing to close the firm grip properly;

She can feel the frailty of Her son,

Skin so soft and sensitive,

The tiny hairs on His arms stand on edge at the slightest touch,

Yet, She can feel the strength inside Him too,

As He kicks out powerfully with restless legs;

She holds Him tightly to Her, the first born always being the dearest,

Feeding from Her breast feels as natural as the shining sun She loves so much,

She can see in His eyes, He knows who Mother is,

And when He sleeps, She watches protectively,

Brushing away the dust balls and random flecks of spit that beset Her boy;

Even now, on this, the first day of the rest of His life,

She conjures grand and bold plans for His future,

He will make a difference in a world crying out for people who can,

She vows to love Him like no mother ever could,

Then the nurses take Him away,

Conditioning Him early is important, they say,

She doesn’t know what they mean,

And days go by with no sight of Her son,

She becomes disturbed, disorientated, distraught,

‘Where is my boy?’

Then the nurses return, tears in their eyes,

Your boy is dead, ma’am,

And She screams, cracking the windows of her hospital room,

The shining sun falls apart with the glass,

And a raging storm can be seen outside,

A flash of thunder, what was that figure?

There He stands, bred and grown, soaked to the skin,

Eyes emptier than the abyss of oblivion,

And He walks away again,

Mother screams, cries, breaks down;

And She wakes up in the present,

Shivering in the cold sweat covering Her body,

And She breaks down again,

Her had been in Her arms.

VIII

I am twenty. Twenty today.

What have I to show for twenty years existence?

Individual accolades from a mediocre team,

Built up, overrated hype let down by the exposure of inability,

Fierce temper, poor choices, the naivety of youth increasing instead of decreasing,

Misplaced kisses, misguided comments, unsought praise undeservedly awarded,

Guilt stacked invisible on shoulders sagging from the weight of failure,

Love for those who deserve better, love delivered by those who should know better,

Loss of those dearest, nearest, and clearest with me,

Fear of leaving behind a legacy unfitting of my true self,

Twenty years of untruths, twenty years of earning something for nothing,

Twenty years of being an apple, twenty years of rotting inside…

This is everything I have for twenty years of living,

Here’s to rectifying all the wrongs in the next twenty…

VIIII

The Owl watched as the Silhouette struck a match

And blew the flame out,

The Owl marvelled slightly at how the Silhouette managed to light a flame

When surrounding Him was wind and rain,

The Owl grew bored then and flew away,

Leaving to the Silhouette Its tree…

Taking away the story of the lost boy.

And the Silhouette spent a full moon at the Owl’s tree,

Unknowing of the inheritance He had received,

Deciding that upon the full moon’s end,

He would up and leave to visit a chlidhood home,

Leaving behind the Owl’s tree, leaves and earth…

In the hope of finding peace in the past.

VV

Wandering around a childhood home,

Lost in the transition with time of its features,

Visiting an old place in search of solitude,

It still contains the essence of past affiliations,

I see myself throwing stones now eroded at the river’s bottom,

The island of pebbles moves beneath my feet as the water flows freely around,

Once it moved beneath our feet.

The not-so-secret escape is now littered with society’s excess,

Cans and crates hanging from bushes and bobbing on the surface,

The filth forms in pools at the island’s edges,

Four Ducks swim through, in search of clean food in dirty water,

While a lone Herron stands frozen on a rock,

Watchful of the currents while taking in all that the dusk entails,

The peace is dying with the sun, but the memories remain.

But it is not time to retire to the indoors yet,

Not time to succumb to the television and a three-in-one,

The blue door of a home from home is ignored in favour of a new venture,

To the park, with its enclosures and open spaces, backways and hideaways,

That harbour none bar the birds, rats and mosquitoes during the day,

Save those of curious heart and incautious mind,

Light is fading, the chance to find something with it.

Up a steep slope, fighting gravity with tired thighs,

This is the nearest thing to a forest I have ever seen,

An almighty alcove amidst angled trees,

Broken branches and stumps of fallen family,

Hiding the ruins of a hoodlum house,

With the slogan ‘Crack Den’ branded in blue and black across it,

Strewn with the burned out buds and smashed bottles of schoolboys.

Yet odd trinkets lie here too, those fitting of a household,

There’s an ashtray, stained with the ashes of half smoked cigarettes,

And a plastic cup from Prague, brown from the muck of the ground,

And smashed plates, floral patterns broken, no dinner on them anymore,

And bumpers from cars, as well as tires, doors and wing mirrors,

And even a full outer shell, burned and rusted,

No need to be driven anymore, ‘so let’s spark a fire and brighten the sky.’

And there are bones here, fossilised, like in a museum, real bones, calcium deficient,

As well as muscle, skin, soul and entirely life deficient,

They belonged to a person before,

And there are clothes bundled up and hidden in the bushes,

Or buried beneath the grass, but not buried enough,

A pair of skinny white jeans catch my eye,

Torn, cast aside, a broken pink phone smashed next to them.

A peace is here, but it is restless,

Birds fly from tree-to-tree, not singing but muttering,

Eyes piercing my presence, despite clear signs of human habitation,

Their lack of comfort stems not from my sheer being there,

But from their unfamiliarity of my life story and previous haunts,

And the vermin join in the condescending chatter,

It is always nice to be welcomed with open wings and borne fangs.

The blunted blades lie shrivelled, yellow, lifeless,

Charred in places where raucous flames roared, tips touching the sky,

Bricks lie broken beside the remains of the walls they once formed,

Glass and branches crunch and break simultaneously with every step,

While the uneven ground coaxes you to fall, hiding many pot holes,

They open up and swallow your leg whole,

Wishing you to trip just to see your blood spill on its balding soil.

And a shudder runs through my body, reverberating in the earth,

There are nothing but dead ends here.

VVI

And he leaves that place newly explored,

Not knowing where to go now.

VVII

Time to vacate this place,

No solace is salvageable from the present, as looking around testifies;

I see hoods gathered by trees, smashing bottles on the nearby path,

With no regard for the old couple walking their dog,

I see two kids with a football each, where once one football was enough for eleven,

A team split by individuals,

I see the veins of my life spread on a window pane, clear in the cold haze of condensation,

Laying out my life’s schematic but failing to pinpoint its moment of triumph,

I see a gig with a crowd of people in white gowns, all lined up in orderly rows,

To applaud what they hear in emotionless ecstasy,

And there I see friends of mine who once were friends with each other,

Sharing the same crowd but separated by a sea of sweating people;

I see everything as it mechanically comes apart, screw by screw,

Until pointlessness in proving a reason for the existence of anything reigns supreme,

With reasons varying from sex to ossification, from money to power -

all of which are often one and the same -

Given by those who claim to live their life to the utmost extreme,

By burning the candle at both ends, as well as in the middle;

And I read the pleading messages from my phone one more time,

And I decide to ignore the pleas of everyone who fails to understand,

And I do not know where I am going now,

And that does not matter, because I do not need to know.

I just need to get there.

VVIII

And while the Silhouette gets ready to embark on one last pilgrimage,

Mother and the family give up on ever seeing him again,

Erecting a headstone of dark green marble, just like Father’s,

To place in the graveyard where we all end up in the end.

Mother had the headstone engraved with a message no one else understood,

‘Remember the lost boy’…