Red-rimmed Eyes
As I was waiting for the
number 51 bus to arrive
after school, I noticed something:
sitting on the bus shelter seats
was a boy with dejected eyes,
red-rimmed, like glasses.
That was the September school began,
and summer ended.
Everyday till July,
I saw him there, but
lacked the guts to say hello,
since sadness and sadness don't
cancel each other out;
his eyes still as hollow
as the first time I saw them.
As the year went on, he
changed from being simply
a sad boy to something worse:
I swear, occasionally, there were flecks
of pure hatred in those eyes
when his face reflected off the side
of the grimy windows, but maybe
that was just the light..
He hardly ever looked up,
and you could never tell whether
he's had an okay-day.
Once he smiled at me, and I
shone like glow worm for the week after.
In the summer, we no longer
caught sight of each other,
but when autumn came creeping around,
he was there again, like home.
The sad truth of it is, summer had changed
a lot in me, and I had other
worries to think about..
One day turned into one week,
the bus shelter seat sat empty,
with an odd silence around it
like an aura marinating in it's change.
On friday, the local newspaper came through
my letterbox; its thump reminding me
curiously of a heartbeat. My father opened
it up and I caught a glimpse on the second
page, top right, about a boy with dejected eyes,
red-rimmed, like glasses,
who decided he couldn't take it anymore
when he looked up for the last time
and the clouds cried in his face.
But allI thought of that humid night
was why he'd drawn a bus shelter
on the bathroom mirror
exactly opposite where he'd taken the
pills.
October came around too soon, and at
halloween, all the ghosts seemed to be of you,
and I gave them all my sweets, as if that
could be enough to bring back something of you.
But I never cried, I should have,
And I never cried, I should have.
-SH
(brighterthananyone's format)
Onism*