The Boy and The Bridge
Each year when October gusts against the windowpane
The boy balances on the bridge
Alone
He is waiting for something to change but it never
does, the cycle just keeps repeating. But he doesn’t
Want to go home. Because home is where his mother drinks
and his father lies to save himself. Most of the time
they don’t care if he’s even there. And so each year
when fall breathes a new life into dead leaves
the boy balances on the bridge
contemplating one thought
Jump
He wonders if he did just impulsively jump if they’d
care, or care enough to look sad at a funeral
which wouldn’t even be black tie. And he
thinks along the lines of memoirs and what
he wants written on his hedge stone. He imagines
it will go like this –
Beloved Boy, if only he could fly
And that seems bitterly ironic because in dreams he
flies past the second star to the right and straight on till morning and pirates
are his only worry. And each
year the boy turns around, trudging back home,
but taking a little longer, not wanting to leave
the relative quiet of the road. Home is always too loud,
yelling and screaming all the time. The boy wonders were
they ever happy, because that would mean something.
But he knows he’ll come back, back to the bridge.
It’s ritual now. Sort of like the meaning of life that way.
Although the movements are all mechanic.
And years later he’ll have to remind himself why he came to
the bridge in the first place.
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Great concept. You told it in a very clear tone, and the style was so simple which made it easy to read and the message apparent and powerful. Last line could have been more powerful, but overall it was great.
I personally enjoyed this, especially the way you wrote it, the format and all. Some sentences that confused me:
"He wonders if he did just impulsively jump if they’d
care, or care enough to look sad at a funeral
which wouldn’t even be black tie."
Black tie...?
"The boy wonders were
they ever happy"
Quote marks, perhaps?
"But he knows he’ll come back, back to the bridge."
This was clear, but you were talking about "home" at first, so when I first read this line, I thought, he's not returning home? Then you clarified it, afterward. Still, you should probably do something to make it so it is clear the first time read.
with 'it' I was refering to life was for him and how it never changed. that sort of thing.
CL
If you ask me, writing a story within a poem is a rather intricate task. However, I think this is an exceptional poem to have been narrative.
Except these two lines confuse me:
What never does?