Lasciate Ogne Speranza, Voi Ch'intrate

“Have you been drinking?”

“No.” Yes. Can’t you smell it?

“Did you talk to that shrink? You know, the one you said you’d pay a visit?”

“I went there.” And turned around before I even laid a hand on the doorknob. I was too scared. I’m always so scared.

“What’s that bruise? Bullies? Or him again?”

“I fell.” Oh, the lies. You can see them, I know you can.

“What’s up with all those questions,” I then ask him but he just shrugs his shoulders like he always does. I tilt my head to look at him from underneath the veil that my fringe creates but he looks just the same. So I try to let myself fall onto my bed to gaze at him upside-down, with my head hanging over the edge. But it doesn’t matter. His eyes are always the same.

“Thought I should ask,” he says, paying little interest in me for the moment.

“Well don’t,” I reply while rolling over onto my stomach. “I have too many people asking me things too often as it is.”

“I care, that’s all,” he shrugs.

I whish he wouldn’t do that. It gets so annoying.

“Yeah, well, don’t,” I muttered, glancing sideways at him. “Or at least not like this.”

He simply looks at me.

Those eyes. Those unfathomable eyes from which I can’t escape. Not that I would want to. It’s the only thing keeping me together. Keeping me sane.

“Why can’t it be like it used to?” I ask in what to me seem like a whiny voice. And as expected I get no reply.

He moves himself from where he has been standing by the door and walks over to my desk, placing himself on the chair. Like so many times before he digs in his bag and brings out his old notebook. Grabbing a pencil from a box at the desk he starts writing.

“Are you tired of my cries?” I want to know.

No reply.

“Is it my fits?” I try.

No reply.

“Is it me?”

At that he nods. Not a hesitant, insecure nod, no. It’s an obvious gesture. At least he’s honest.

“But I need someone to hold me when I cry.” I’m not even ashamed admitting that. You can’t really be embarrassed around him anyway. He can make you feel insecure but never ashamed. Never that.

“It’s really draining. And is there even a point? Will it amount to something at all?” he asks me without even a glance over his shoulder.

“No,” I sigh. “I guess not. But is there ever a point to anything?”
He laughs. That dry, rational laugh of his. Emotions he saves for his poetry and logic is for everything else. And it makes hem seem cold at times. But it also makes him untouchable.

“Don’t go there,” he then tells me. “You don’t want to discuss philosophical matters with me.”

He’s right; I don’t. I never want to discuss anything with him, or with anyone for that matter. Thoughts aren’t my thing. I’m all feelings. Practically pieced together by different sentiments that create a pattern I like to refer to as myself.

“Whatever,” I mutterer as I slip of the bed and walk over to the window.

I stare at nothing and everything. I gaze through the dirty glass that my mother never cleans. She sees the world through a haze anyway so what would be the difference? I guess I could clean it myself but I like it the way it is; distorted. My view of the world. Distorted.

“Is there any reason in particular that made you ask me to hold you through your tears again?” he suddenly wants to know. He has put the pencil down and is looking over at me. I flash a wry smile.

“Because it rips me apart. I want to cry, I need to cry, but if I do I’ll fall to pieces. You can keep me together,” I answer as I look him steadily in the eye.

He looks away.

“It’s tiring, isn’t it?” I whisper.

Another nod.

“I guess it does get old after a while. You where there when I lost my faith in everything. You where there when the girls with no names and blurred faces passed though my life like ghosts.” I pause for a while. “I gave you merely three weeks of breathing time. Then it was you how stood by my side though endless fits of rage. After that yet another quiet week passed. Before you had to save me from myself. You’re the one getting me through it all.”

“I just don’t know for how long I can hold your hand and guide you through it,” he says with something close to sorrow sneaking into his voice.

“If you just stay by my side through my last sins I will ask nothing more of you.”

He gives me a half smile and then returns to his poems. I wonder who or what is annoying him today. I know it isn’t me. It probably isn’t me.

His poems are so cynical. So bitterly ironical. I hope it isn’t about me.

He actually showed me how to write poetry. Different techniques and styles. Taught me about rhyming schemes and all those fancy structures the Romans used. It’s almost funny how he knows all that and never uses it. He likes free verse and simple ways to rhyme even though it’s such a contrast to his very nature. To his complexity.

I can’t write poetry to save my life. But I have a journal where I scribble down feelings and thoughts. That’s where my mind is; sketched across frayed papers, banished from its rightful place inside my head. And I also let my emotions seep through my pencil into metrical bound structures, not to loose them but to save it all from slipping into forgetfulness. To keep it from fading into oblivion. It’s venting. It’s ranting. I’m not a poet. I wouldn’t call myself that, not by my own accord.

“Do you think I’ll get into a lot of trouble if I skip school tomorrow?” By the time the last word has left my mouth he has put the pencil back and closed the notebook with a sigh.

“Is it worth a fresh set of bruised from him?”

Dad. You can call him my dad. “I guess not.”

“It’s not that bad anyway, is it?”

“The way I either don’t exist or is placed on this earth only to be a punching bag, scapegoat and a subject of misdirected spite you mean?” I say bitterly through gritted teeth.

“It won’t last forever. It’s just a short journey,” he tells me with reassurance written all over him. “And I’ll be your accompany. You don’t have to go through it alone.”

“It’s hell,” I spit out, my voice muffled and raspy by fury. I clench my fists.

“You’re not a prisoner, you know. Just a visitor. One day you’ll walk away, leaving this behind.”

It’s my turn to nod. And I do, my head slowly moving up and down in a concurring manor. But my fists are still clenched and my teeth are still gritted.

Wrapped in soothing silence we both move through the room to sit down on my bed. But in this house silence is rare and it’s only a matter of minutes before it is shattered into fragments of curses and screams. Somewhere a door is slammed shut. Through the thin walls I can hear heartbroken sobs that I know belong to my little brother.

“Are you gonna talk to him?”

“Yeah.” No, way. No fucking way.

“Perhaps I should go?”

“Perhaps.” Why can’t you stay?

“I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Sure.”

“At school?”

“At school.” I’m lying again. You see it, don’t you?

He gets up and walks over to the door. For a while he stays motionless with his hand rests on the doorknob. He bits his lip deep in thought.

“You know, it would be better if you talked to someone about it. We’re just seventeen years old after all, you and I.”

“I know.”

“It’s not your burden to bear but maybe you should involve an adult who could help your family. And your brother. Especially him.”

“I’ll do my best.” I can’t wait to walk out on this. I can’t wait to betray them.

“Because if you give up on them, well, that’s as far as I can walk with you.”

“I know.”

With a smile that reviles nothing of what’s on his mind he opens the door and starts walking down the hall. I stand in the doorway and look after him as he goes.

“I think you might be my friend.” The words tumble over my lips when his foot hit the first step of the stair. He stops, turning his head towards me.

A nod. Then he continues down the staircase.

I really do think that Virgil is my friend. Although I’m not too familiar with the word. It belongs to a language I don’t speak. It’s like a foreign word that leaves an exotic taste in my mouth when passing my lips clumsily.

Virgil. He doesn’t know I call him that. I don’t think he does. Unless it has tripped of my tongue in one of my dizzy, drunken states. I don’t think it has. But I don’t know.

My brother’s weeping creeps through my ears again and nestles into my head. I sigh. I won’t go to him. I won’t try to comfort him. For being so little, four years younger than me, he’s quite strong. And he takes it all out on me. He really is his father’s son. And in all honesty he scares me. His tantrums scare me. His blood in the sink scares me. Stained bandages and scarlet band aids and soaked tissues scare me. But calling an ambulance, talking to a psychiatrist, getting some help. For all of us. That scares me even more.