Writing the Unwritten

I was a queer little boy who was sad sometimes, and I think those boys deserve to be written about

So read about them and hold them a little tighter than before, and maybe change the way you think about sadness. I used to think of sadness and see an image of a frail, hurt girl. I think a lot of us see that same image, an image crassly filling our throats and soaked up by our minds.

Here is a story of a boy:

I see him taking hits under the table. In the corner of his eye are unsuspecting twelve-year-old boys; their presence holds no weight other than having stood the test of fading trauma. He has embodied some routine and consistency, but only in the space he knows best. He doesn’t know that school isn’t secure and doesn’t have the same capacity for escape as the world he has built back home. But the boy is smart, and he will make a way to get his hits of peace. With loud boys in corners and peripherals, he finds the sharpest pen he can get his hands on and creates the beloved openings of flesh that bubble up his sorrows of the day.

He takes in the moment, and the voices around him melt into thin mush; the landscape is clear, and he is free. But the hit will end, and he will come up from the table pumped with energy and clarity. I see that little boy pushing through the day with mounds of energy, he has his hands sticky with control and conquer. I see him and struggle not to turn him into a hyperfunctional ideal. Oh, the little boy that I see.

I see him escaping the night to freedom. He is covered in darkness with blue light seeping into his shallow eyes, yet this time in the corner is his unsuspecting sister. The sister who loves through time and presence. They are on hour ten? Twelve? Hour too long of loving time where the boy is in two worlds at once. One world with love on the couch, not so far away, and one world with love in abstract pain. I see this little boy escaping towards freedom, and I am wondering if his decency to escape was in part due to elevated respect for the person who inhabited this specific corner. Maybe it was, or maybe it was the privilege of being in the world he created.

Nonetheless, I see him bathed in the light of the bathroom, warmed by the escape. He will take his perfeed tool, and this time he gets to take all the precautionary steps. I see the little boy dance slowly with the moment. His back against the door, needle in hand, and bare flesh pounding and waiting. I see him, and for the moment, the sound of the faraway moment with his sister melts into thin mush, the landscape is clear, and he is free.

He will look up when the moment is over, the hit is over, and he is ready to conquer the space of pain he lives in lowly. Oh, the little boy that I see is free of pain, sticky with control, and warm with conquer.