Young Writers Society

It’s awfully hard without you, you know? Your paintings have been taken down and I don’t know where they are.

There’s a big chasm, punch-in-the-wall where your room used to be. I run up the long and winding stairs from school, naturally, and when I get to your cove my feet come to a halt and my leather-bound shoes screech across the hardwood, mahogany floor because I suddenly come to my senses and realise you’re not there anymore. The realisation hits me like a sledge hammer shattering your very existence and I cling to the vague memory of you carefully preventing you from skimming past my fingertips.

When I walk into your old sanctuary, which I now do more than ever, I feel the room change into the old environment it was before you flew away. It feels like the music is still blaring out of the speakers, the guitar is still being strummed and the drum skins employed fully.

I miss you, you know? Your clothes have been sold now. A jacket went for £786,000. I never understood why, didn’t that jacket only cost £10 from a department store? But, because you wore it, apparently that makes it pricier. I don’t understand that, I can’t comprehend it. Why do you cost so much? You’re just you. You’re gone now – the elder folk say you cost even more now you’ve disappeared. It’s all a phony, incomprehensible mess. I remember your leather jacket. That’s been sold, too. I remember you sitting in your hideaway in that coat, playing until your fingers bled.

Did you know that I sat in the corner of your four walls and I thought of how I was sat in your tree with you? And, how we fell asleep and the next day I saw you on the cover of “Mersey Beat”? It was an accident and you covered my eyes and we left the shop. I think you always tried to protect me from that sort of thing. I recall sitting up with you that night, the fire was the only bright thing in the room, and your eyes, quite oddly, were not. You said “I want you to be the only thing in my life that won’t change, even when everything else will”. It seemed like a corny, classic line so I laughed. You looked hurt, and I still wish I hadn’t laughed. I took your hand, just to reassure you that I wouldn’t change. I haven’t, but you’re gone. I tried my best to never change, but it didn’t keep you here.

Why aren’t you here? Sometimes I walk through the fields and sit among the golden, wondrous flowers and daydream about you and how much I wish you’d succumb and come home to be with me where you belonged. Surely, you have a choice? Remind me if I’m being naïve. I dream you’ll sweep me into your arms once again, but I know you’re probably never coming home. I daydream until tears run down my cheeks; I never notice those tears until I’ve snapped out of it.

I wish we didn’t have to grow up, I can’t imagine being anywhere without you, even now. I want to grow wings. Do you think it’s possible? I’d like to be a bird with you. This house is empty, like my body, my numbness seeps into the walls and the house no longer breathes or functions.

I was walking home from school and I saw your face on a magazine. I thought it really was you at first, and I wanted to run up and hug you and ask where the heck you’d been, but I noticed it wasn’t you, and I remembered you hated me looking at pictures of you on magazines. I covered my eyes the way you would and walked off because you’re not here to do that anymore, or to protect me anymore. Your glasses looked a little different, but they suit you.

I can recall the time I used to wear your glasses. They used to fuzz and blur my vision so much I’d laugh. “Why the hell do you have to wear these?!” I’d splutter, and you’d chuckle, shaking your head. We laughed a lot, I miss that. I don’t laugh much anymore.

So, in the end, sitting in your big old empty room. No clothes. No guitars. No glasses. No books and no paintings. I think about it all. Where’d you go, John?