The Middle
Just two steps into the newly renovated church building, our tragic hero shakes the weathered hand of a nameless face. Stranded in The Middle of this sea of broad smiles and blank stares he waits for rescue, but leaves with cliche. Meanwhile he fakes a smile and sings along to another variation of the same song. He listens to the jaded choir and over the ghostly monotony, hears the voice of a child; he hears himself.
Home greets him with two unfed dogs. An unpainted room. An uncooked meal and the unsmiling face of a younger brother. He defeats the day and drowsily ascends to a bedroom that will never truly be his. An old friend shakes his battered hand and holds him close.
Fresh blood on the sharp steel strings. He keeps strumming. His left hand is calloused and left feeling numb while his right hand is left to feel the wrath of his strum. With flat high notes of promise, his throat growing dry, he is alive in this moment and with tears in his eyes, he stops himself. Between deep breaths and a new baritone voice, he hears sharp sighs muffled only by the fresh paint on rotting doors. Hearing his mother cry by night, and watching his father deteriorate by day, he smells responsibility: fresh cut grass and clean dishes. With the taste of NyQuil on his tongue, he feels both tired and restless. As he finally lies back, the weight of adulthood weighs heavily on his adolescent chest; he is treated as a toddler, but needed as a caretaker. He sits, helplessly teething on desperation. Silently practicing his role as arbitrator. He is forever battling between sympathy and logic. Forever wrestling between hope and cynicism. He is forever lost in The Middle.
