#boneache

Trials upon trials and trails lay before me, stretching every which way without a care in the world. The meanders cutting so far that oceans are formed in their wake. It is an ill comfort.

I sit on a boat of bygone years, and family’s passings that shallowly sits upon the river as I am pushed down. I attempt to steer us right, fix our path, or follow the grain of the tides— but I cannot see.

I am not supposed to see after all. I was not split for that purpose. Instead, the boy sits on the bow of the boat, clammy hands gripping the aged wood with a fearful composure and calloused mind that I wish he did not need to have.

Wherever he says I go, I go. Whenever he says I pause, I pause. He is my guide and I trust him so, but there are times where I cannot leave him at the front because a different kind of trust has been broken.

Neither of us can dip our feet in the waters of this river you see, it takes what it touches. It’ll grip you and drag you with its tide, keeping you with it until it has weathered you completely.

I have a rope tied around the boy now, and it is anchored around my middle. Weight-wise it would do nothing, but the guilt eats away at the boy, and that is sadly effective.

He has tried to dip into the water many a time. Once he even got close enough to ghost a finger over its broken blue film.

I stop him any time he tries, and I regret not knotting us together to begin with. Maybe he would’ve stayed on the boat then, not tipping precariously over the edge like some out of wack circus show, or maybe he would’ve stayed close enough to me so I could grab him.

He does now, of course. But I will harbor these regrets until our boat gives out, or until it is sunk. Memories dropped into the expanse of wine-blue seas, and purple lies a cast out net to fish for sympathies and understanding.

I cannot dwell on this now though, not with the boy rocking on the bow, not with his hands wrapped loosely around the wood, not with his inability to tell the truth anymore in regards himself.