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Today I'm eighteen, my mother already is banging pots and pans. Multitasking her tv shows, whilst talking on the phone. She was gossiping about a woman named Martha Roberson. Our next door neighbor. "She talks more shit, than a city sewer can hold. Disgusting if you ask me, she's just a bitter woman, that's lonely. And I've tried to be her friend Lena, I've really tried." I was sitting next to Levi, as he chowed down on some oats. "Mother at it again with this Martha woman, I don't know why she just won't move away. Spare the lady of her wrath. Every time mum sees her she gives her this deep ugly scowl." Listening to my brother talk, and chew, I just turned an ear. My mother was quite the animated character. Never too much alarmed me though, she just couldn't help to be herself. Couldn't ask for her to be anyone else. And I don't think she'd succeed even if she tried to be someone else, she was fine just the way she was really. "Today's your birthday." "Today is yet another day, that I am trapped here. With no sense of hope on ever leaving. Today is not a day of celebration. It is another day of solitude, and sadness." I sternly protested to my brother in a sound of calm. Levi always hated my negativity, as did I. But it was expected of a boy with little to no experience of life, and all that it had to offer, besides a pen, paper, and a heavy heart, was anger, and a scattered mind. "Eat Stone! Build your appetite, I'm making something special for dinner tonight!" She was more excited than I, her gentle eyes gleamed with a genuine excitement of me becoming a grown man. She's been dreading the day, I know she has. She's always scared on our birthdays, she'd try to hide it, with her homemade birthday cakes, and decorations. The only parties we've ever had was with my grandparents, we didn't have friends, we were homeschooled. My mother took the seriousness of our color differences more severely than my father. He didn't really hold us from exploring a world beyond our household, but he didn't make it known to my mother. "Stone. Sweetie what's the matter with you? Do you not like what I've made? Did you want me to make you something new? Something different? Oh! I've got it!" She switched around in a haste and began to gather her cookbook, it was battered, old, and falling apart. But she loved it, loved it so much that she wouldn't change it for the world. Just like she loved us so much, she kept us from the world. "Mother, no I'm fine. I'm uh, I'm just tired. Can I rest now?" "Oh, you say you're tired boy? Well then, yes yes, you go upstairs and you rest now, you rest! I'll um, I'll clean this all up, and I'll get started on your dinner!" Levi stared at me through hooded eyes of questioning, awkwardly swallowing, and turning away I headed to my room. Tonight Iven said he's got something for me, I'm just hoping it's my freedom. This is Stone, today is December fifteenth, the time is 8:30 this morning, and I am signing off. Until dinner. Then I'll be back of course.
