How to kill a poet

Chapter 4

Bryon was all too familiar; clear gray skies, muffled whispers, itchy sweaters, it was all part of growing up in England. In the colder seasons, days like that were bog-standard. Lerwick's library was teeming with fatigued students that November, Bryon being one of them. Still, Bryon could almost convince himself he was alone. People spoke in hushed tones and sauntered deliberately through the halls divided by mahogany bookshelves. Frankly, you could hear a pin drop.

He'd been sitting in that dull brown ladder-back chair for three days only leaving it when he had classes. He'd analyzed poetry and read books on how to write it. Much to his delight, he was almost finished.

A myriad of books were spread before him on a table. Byron, Shakespeare, a book titled 'Evoking Emotion: The Poets Guide', that Bryon had finished in one sitting.

He leaned back and sighed, and a distant memory returned to him.

He faintly remembered a few years back In his living room during summer vacation, his father flicking through a newspaper while Bryon practiced Latin.

'What blather this is,' his dad mumbled.

'What?' Bryon asked. He was trying to discern how to pronounce salvette.

'These journalists criticize Withman's Song Of Myself far too much. I'm telling you son, Song of Myself is brilliant because Walt Whitman knows how to incorporate the senses. Not many poets do that nowadays.'

Bryon made a mental note to write that down.

He opened the last book on his list, rubbing his eyes. Bryon figured he'd touched his face one too many times the past few days, because when he rubbed his eyes he felt a multitude of bumps on his cheeks, that he figured were zits. The last book in Bryon's collection was a thin scarlet hardcover book, a collection of Emily Dickinson's poetry. He flipped the first page with a sigh.

He wondered what his friends were doing. He recalled the long dreary summers he'd spent without his friends. He never saw them from early July to late June when Lerwicks was closed but the rest of the year he saw them on a daily basis.

He was well liked at home in his soulless town with its so-called propertied gentlemen and snug little streets, but he thought the people there were nothing but unbending and uncompromising brats who'd never had to work for anything in their lives. The people at Lerwicks weren't better or anything, but Blair, Lincoln, Bridget, and Connor were. He could handle everyone else at Lerwicks as long as he had his friends.

Next summer Oscar and Jamie, his rich, outlaw 'friends' from home were going to Germany which meant he wouldn't have to see them for over a year. This didn't irritate Bryon at all. His parents were quite fond of Oscar and Jamie. They were rebels with no sense of right and wrong, but their daddies had enough money for Bryon's mother and father to look past that.

Oscar and Jamie loved Bryon. Why? When talking about Bryon's hometown one conclusion could be applied to most questions, especially with Jamie and Oscar: money.

Not to be ungrateful. If Bryon didn't have money he wouldn't be at Lerwicks, and if he wasn't at Lerwicks he might've never broken the cycle. He would be just another photograph in his lingering family tree. Another hoary old man with tired eyes and no hope left. But Connor, Lincoln, Blair, and Bridget had changed that. They'd taught him to carpe diem, to seize the day. Bryon didn't know what he wanted to be, but one thing was for sure: He was going to be great.

A burst of adrenaline surged through him. One day when the world knows my name, he thought, I'm gonna say that I owe it all to my friends. Perhaps Bryon would never be a Mozart or an Edison, but that was okay. He just needed to be more. More than his strict and controlling parents. More than his spoiled aunts and uncles. More than all these despairing fools and hopeless causes that surrounded him.