Past

 Before all this, before high school, before meeting all my friends I got now, before I entered high school where no one knew of my past or me I was just a timid boy from the streets. I moved from place to place as a kid with my mom and brother, from New York, to Baltimore, to Maryland. Our dad left us before I could remember anything about him, and my brother could barely remember anything but his face, though I never felt I lacked anything in my family. My mother was my mom and my father, she made sure we had food on the table, took care of us, and did the best she could for us with the cards she was dealt.

As we moved pretty often my relationships with other people would often be cut short, but strong bonds don’t just need to be built of time, some just seem destined to me.

I remember when we had just moved to Baltimore, into this small old apartment because my mom got a job there or something and there were good schools there. I was sad at the time, I just felt sad about a lot of things, the cards life had dealt me, how life ended up. I’d cry everyday, I felt stuck in a deep sadness that I couldn’t shake off. I was in a new place I had never been before, the house was old and small, and we had brought only 3 suitcases with us, that was everything we had now in this new city. It was summer when we had moved to Baltimore but school was gonna start very soon. I was scared… really scared. I was scared how they’d look at me, if they’d like me, worried of them judging me. I was scared how they would see me. I’m not good enough I felt. I felt there was no light left.

“Hey whatcha doing” My brother said.

“Nothing…just laying on my bed.”

“Alright, breakfast is on the table if you want.”

“Aight.” It wasn’t an uncommon sight to see me laying on my bed hours after I had woken up. I didn’t feel like doing anything nor did I feel like going back to sleep, a strange discomfort circulated within.

Though heaven gave life to us like momma told me, the life we had wasn’t blessed. Up until then I was bullied by older kids, we lived in the streets filled with crime, and horrible things had happened there, things I just wanna bury and forget.

Though if horrible things happen on these streets so do miracles, the miracle of my mom, of my brother, and the miracle of me.

The day seemed to go by just as every other day had gone,I sat on my bed thinking and thinking only to think of nothing. Well this summer it wasn’t like I had anything to do, most of the time I stayed home. My mom had already gone to work at that point. When I finally decided to get up and get some breakfast something called to me. It was a paper and pen, a pen to write my thoughts, and a paper to hold onto those thoughts. Then as I wrote, and my pen moved from the top to the bottom of the page I felt a sense of freedom I hadn’t felt in a while.

Painful world

I feel pain everywhere

I trade tearz 4 fear and fear for tearz

The cycle doesn’t end does it?

I wonder if your listening heaven

I wonder if your watching grandpa grandma

Are you still protecting me

Ain’t no one who lived a more tragic life than me

I feel as miserable as I could be

My heart feels cold and can’t sing anymore

I liked it those songs that were sung to me

Mamma’s lullabies she used to sing

I can hear them now

All that flows out now is tearz and the world’s screamz

Could I trade this fear and tearz for something else?

For love?

Though it was just something I wrote I felt it gave me hope. It gave me something that felt like I could keep going. I had a thought like, so god isn’t dead. Well it was just a little spark in front of everything that had happened though. After that I brushed my teeth and got to eating. My brother had made bacon with eggs on toast, the bacon was covered in oil and a little burnt, and the eggs had a bunch of pepper on top. Well it was good though, I could picture my brother struggling to cook this, trying not to set himself and the whole house on fire. It made me chuckle a little.

I took my food to eat near the window of the apartment. I saw the streets of Baltimore, and the sky and ate my food in silence looking at the view. The birds were chirping, or more like screaming.

“Ohhh you finally got up.”

“Yeah.”

“You wanna hit the convenience store.”

“What for.”

“Play the games up front.”

“Okay.” Well as for having nothing to do my brother was also on the same page. Most of the time he just wasted his time at arcades, or listening to cassettes wherever he could. We spent a lot of our time doing stuff like this with the tiny bit of money we could scrounge up. We’d end up playing random arcade machines at the front of convenience stores for however long we could last. Most of the time we were able to last at least 25 minutes, with 4 quarters.

“You go first.”

“Okay.” My brother seemed to notice what was happening to me and was trying to help in his own way. I started off going pretty good, I was playing a space shooter game. I was beating up all the enemy ships, and beat the first boss, though I kept messing up after that and lost 3 stages after the boss.

“Ooooh, too bad. Alright I’ll show you how it’s done.” He cracked his knuckles and put in our 2nd and last quarter. Yeah we didn’t have that many quarters that day. He got off the first boss without sweat. I guess dying all those time wasn’t in vain. He kept on steadily making progress. Then he got to the second boss, it was one big mega spaceship. He dodges and weaves the enemy's barrage of shots, and small mini planes he spawned out of his butt. He had only a bit of his health left, but the boss only had a bit of health left. After a close match my brother beat the second boss and started screaming and howling

“OOOOOWWWLLL.”

But then the next stage started when he wasn’t paying attention and he died.

“AWWW Shit. Well I’ll get the high score next time, I already know I’m the best…Sooo schools starting tomorrow, you ready.”

“Nooo.”

“Well you better be, you got 3 days, then we're back in school prison.”

“NOooooo.” I screamed