Another Work For Just Another Tired, Old Writer

It’s been six months since my wife left me. She took everything from me; my library of priceless classics, my piano I’ve had since before we were married, my grandfather’s violin, my fine china, my dignity. She told me she couldn’t take living with a “writer” anymore and that I need to get my head out of the clouds. The woman I’ve loved for twenty-seven years hates me. After Sam died, I approximate that was when whatever we had died. Our only son, dead at the age of fifteen, and I guess she couldn’t bear to look at my face anymore because she sees him in my eyes. My beautiful son, gone, and now my sweet Eva gone too. She threw my typewriter on the lawn and dumped my clothes in the garbage, then told me to get out. That was July 12th, and I’ve been living in this desolate, dark, damp, disgusting, depressing hovel called an apartment since. I have since lost the inspiration to write beautiful poetry, which I attribute to having lost my muse, and this is the first time I have used my typewriter in I believe five months. My shelves, once filled with the works of Chaucer and Tolstoy, are now littered with empty wine bottles. My gorgeous mahogany desk, one of the few things I managed to keep from Eva, is now bursting with bottles of scotch and cognac instead of short stories and plays about revolution and romance. My life has slowly grinded to a bitter halt that I may never pass and start anew from. This has been the first sign of improvement I’ve seen at all. I’m addressing these things instead of hiding from them. Last Friday night I had a .357 Magnum revolver in my hand and I was just muttering to myself incoherently the words “Give me a reason.” I was begging myself for a reason not to end my life. There was none other than I had forgotten to take the safety off.  Perhaps I’m not supposed to improve, or even live. After all, what am I without a family or my writing? Maybe these last few words, imprinted on a piece of paper, will become my definition. Is the rambling of a drunk really what I want the world to remember me for? Not my perfect little family or my work but this one scrap of paper before I die? Will anyone know anything about me or my life other than what they read here? I was never famous for my writing, and I’ve always lived a life of obscurity. So is this the end, the end of obscurity for me? Will people remember me after I’m gone? This is the end, dear traveler. I bid ye farewell, and ask you not to think of me as a coward but simply as a writer, a husband, and a father.