Hands in his pockets, deep, playing with the lint at the bottom. people looked at him, he looked at the floor. Nervous? Not quite, but angry? Absolutely. He was always angry. His knuckles were white, veins and tendons rising toward the flickering ceiling lights. He keeps his anger to himself. Inside himself. His explosions are epic, natural disasters.
~
I remember the last time, with him, his father and me. There was so much yelling. The screams like thunder. The punch happened quick as lightening. Just a flash. His father lay on the floor, moaning, clutching his face. His knuckles were white then too. They soon turned to bruises, yellow and red and purple. It was sickly beautiful...As were most things about him. His smile.
~
A dark, sad smile. His face lifted toward the window, a child passed, their eyes connected...held...the child broke the connection first. His hands relaxed, just for a second, but you could almost HEAR the blood rushing back to his fingertips. You would have thought it hurt, but he showed no sign of feeling anything. He turned his eyes to me, deep brown shining golden under the yellow lights.
~
He was so scared. You could see the lines around his eyes, like those of an old man with history like textbooks. And I missed him, in that moment, more than the numerous times he was gone, because in his eyes he was lost. The same look, in his eyes, as when we were children. The moment his mother walked out the door, not a glance back or a 'goodbye'. Just a little finger wave, as if she were simply heading out to the store for an hour. Yet, with no intention of returning. The hollows of his cheeks have deepened since then, and there was now the shadows of hair along his jaw. As well as a matching amount of scars scattered across his face like freckles.
~
I stood when everyone else did, the prayers said, and followed his family out. My dress trailing along dirty gravel and muddy grass. Behind me they lowered his body into the deep trench in the ground. That was the last time I saw him.