Pain Eulogy | A Poem

 

Somewhere on the West Coast, a boy wanders

His secret is that his story was ghost written by a masochist for a mother

And edited by a sadist of a father. 

Each page scribbled in exquisite ballpoint pen 

Lavish Spencerian script. 

Somewhere on an empty beach the boy picks up sand in his palms and watches it sift through his fingers. 

Like the funnel of a sand timer he watches each individual grain collapse to his feet. 

There is no wonder in his eyes. 

He does not fear the tide,

Shards of glass,

The clatter of a belt buckle at midnight

Or a white knuckled fist.

His face is numb and his skin hardened over bone.

Comfort was always something that came after pain. 

And Love, the lubrication after the copper taste of blood.

He has the answers to the questions he doesn't yet know to ask.

As time continues to tick away

He slowly digs a trench to separate continents.

To cut off a slice of something to call his.

The wind billows from the sea tossing about the boy's hair

And he considers death and all her comforts.

Like the sun yawning over the horizon 

The boy draws a long breath. 

There's a line that he's been tracing. 

Leading to where he does not know but each time he closes his eyes, it's there. 

A connected power source between eternities. 

Forever dying and undying. 

The truth he knows is that when he grows up

he will read the final chapter,

and this coast will soon be nothing more than a memory.

There is more than a billion names carried on the wind from across the sea 

And the only name he hears among them is his own. 

Comfort comes after pain

And the sea gentle in its beckoning 

Summons him to his grave.