More Cracks

My parents are old-fashioned. They don't want to know about it.

They just close their eyes and imagine their son as they would like to remember him. A little boy playing soccer, running up and down the field chasing after the ball while they watched and cheered.

Now the impenetrable walls of innocence and ignorance are starting to crumble. If you look closely enough you can see the cracks and the shoddy foundation; a rushed and mindless construction. But you have to look very closely and we don't usually take the time to see.

So they don't ever meet him. My lover, my companion, my life. Like a rain forest or an iceberg, he can only be imagined and then quickly forgotten in the bright, soothing glow of the television set. Or the sweetness of a Pepsi.

In denying him, they don't know me, the true me. Do they even want to know their son as he is?

I feel the pain of not being recognized. The pain of constantly being mistaken for a uniformed little boy who wasn't very good at soccer anyway. I'm a man. I can feel sadness wash over me in their silence like the running of salmon against the tide. If they ignore my love, they certainly don't want to see my tears. So, despite myself, I lock the pain and the love away and play my part, the good son.

How can I wake them up? Shake them and rip them out of their comfortable illusion? Make them see the obvious pain caused by their chosen silence?

All I can see is myself in a ball of flame set against concrete. The concrete has cracks too. Everything has cracks.

At least I'm not alone.