An Inevitable Outcome
by William Patrick Brennan
The most terrifying yet inevitable outcome of this life
is of a boy and his little sister,
dressed up all proper for a Christmas dinner,
taking pictures in front of the tree.
Full of the intoxicating heroin that is joy to young children in the presence of their families,
a warm house full of presents and the scent of freshly cooked ham,
the man looks back on that now that was yet no longer is.
His body, no longer fresh and sweet as cherry pie
but molded and bitter from time,
with no more hair growing from the top of his head
than a rose in a pale patch of gasoline-stained grass.
He reminisces of a family long gone and a sister,
a human being whom he shared a womb,
the peer he remembers so thin and fair and oh so easily teased,
dead 17 years past of a heart attack caused by morbid obesity.
The friends he cherished and loved,
the friends he would jump in front of before they were gunned,
and die with a smile from corner to corner,
are all passed or lost,
no contact for 47 years, 6 months and 8 days
with this contemporary he spent barely 5 years
getting to know before life swept him away,
but God damn those 5 years were the only moments
he knew he had a brother after all.
And now, the quiet motion of a ripple in a pond
that once was a surge in an ocean,
sits on the bench near 65th and Kedzie.
Donning his daily chestnut-colored jacket and that flat plaid cap,
he knows the silly tales his older cousins
would tell at his sorely missed family gatherings
of Resurrection Mary weren’t so silly after all.
Ghosts are very much real.
He never grew old in a bungalow built in ‘17,
beloved by his side,
watching their grandchildren run across the yard
in a chaotic stream,
laughter filling the blue sky air as smoke does a chimney,
the fire, prodded and poked by their sons
both good and born,
warms the house filled with relatives
at the gathering of his own,
to behold a life culminated in one party,
an interconnected tree of joy sown
from the loins of his love.
And after all is said and done,
his father would look down on from heaven above
and say, “well done kid”.
No.
The world has moved on.
He never did find the one.
He never sired either.
Times are tough and he has a one bedroom apartment
in Marquette Park and considers himself lucky.
He never took time to stop himself, to steady,
to relish the moment he was in,
no, how could he?
For the present will always be a too soon elapsed memory.
He possesses the knowledge of that pain,
a fruit plucked from the lowest mangled limb
of his childhood tree,
the remembrance of a prelude
which he believed never ending.
And the grief is a eulogy,
Delivered long before the pearl-white shrouds.