Only Silence Remains.

It hurt to leave him. I never told him how much it tore at my heart and ripped it to pieces each and every time I thought about it. We were young when I first witnessed this horrible feeling, even now after so many years it hurts as bad as the first time I said good bye. And somedays, even worse.

He thinks I don’t notice things. He thinks I’m fine with talking about Mikey and my family. But really I just want him to know that he could have a normal life if he wanted one. If only he’d ask for one.

He thought I was free from the world he lives in, the world where everything hurts, and nothing seems real, you only have your memories that haunt you until you’re exhausted and are forced to give up on them. I’m sure he thought I was free. Only thing was, I’ve never felt so trapped and consumed by it.

I can never tell what he’s thinking; sometimes I’m scared what I’d find if he ever decided to let me in. But I would never refuse it no matter the horrid images he filled my head with. I’d always listen to what he’d have to tell me, most of the talking we do is from my lips to his ears and returned in his body language. But the words I have to say are nothing compared to what he has to say and sometimes I think about telling him.

Because Frank, words tell you nothing; body language tells you everything, it betrays all the lies you never utter and it tells me more secrets than I ever wanted to know. Your body tells me more secrets then your lips ever did.

I debate about telling him many, many times, but I don’t know who it’d hurt worse, him or me?

The only time I can tell what he’s thinking is when he traces the invisible scars on his arms, or holds his stomach as if there was some sort of pain there besides the hunger I’ve been suspecting.

He has no idea how much it hurts to see him like this. It’s like seeing him again and again on that dirty Jersey street.

I’ve never heard silence so loud until I saw him, sticking out like a punk kid surrounded by posh insignificant beings. At first I thought I was seeing things as the words flashed in my mind:

No survivors.

I thought there was no way this beaten and broken man was the same smiling kid I used to be friends with. There was no way.

He looked like he had aged about 10 years instead of just the 5 that we had been apart. He was just a kid in my eyes then, a young, beautiful, flawless teenager with aspirations bigger than my own. I thought my mind had gone crazy, ever since the day I decided to read the newspaper; I couldn’t get him out of my head. He was my horrible secret. No one needed to know, not even me, but I did. Sometimes I wonder what if would be like if I never read that article. But I did.

After weeks I tried to stop obsessing, but I couldn’t get the firey, bloody, horror filled images from my mind that the journalist painted for me. I wonder if my soul was the only one the article haunted? Most people looked at the paper, threw it in the trash bin and it was done with. Most things were never brought up again.

I wasn’t a big paper reader, but something told me to read it that morning while I drank my coffee. My dad was done with it, he usually only occupied himself with Worldly news and Sports. I figured I’d see what’s happening in Jersey, I had nothing better to do and it would just sit on the kitchen table until my mother would finally give in and throw it out.

The name of the son was the same one that had haunted me continuously for five years.
Frank Iero.

It wasn’t a large article, but the size still scared me. There was no photo, my mind couldn’t even imagine one there. I couldn’t imagine the flames engulfing a house that I visited regularly in my childhood, but at the same time I couldn’t get frozen images of the flames or the extinguished mess out of my mind.

I thought I was going crazy. You would too if you found out the only person you ever fell in love with was tortured to the point of near insanity and then burned to death.

No, I had a right to go crazy.