The Boy With Star Eyes

by The Cowl Editor on October 28, 2021


Halloween


A little boy sitting on a bed reading a book
Photo courtesy of pexels.com

by Max Gilman ’25

 

What came first,

The rope,

Or the knot,

The knife,

Or the cut,

The murder,

Or the disdain?

Nonetheless,

One leads to the other,

In an endless cycle of circling disparity.

Before all these, though,

Came the child,

With a free mind,

To fill with ideas.

 

There he was,

Laying on a bed he honed for years,

Since his old life,

When he was but a child,

Tears grew into puddles,

On the indents of his face, 

Whilst he stared with starry eyes,

At a white ceiling panel,

Accompanied by other panels,

That ran along the whole upper surface.

Above them lay things his mother had no knowledge of,

Empty bottles of liquor,

Downed in silence days before,

His eyes slowly lost stars,

As his tears began to subside,

He thought about his mother,

And her disdain for who he had become.

He thought of the past days,

When he and his mother would play,

When he was child,

In his old life.

Now he has a good time,

Through a bottle of liquor.

 

When will the young boy’s eyes dry of tears?

When will the boy return to his mother?

When he becomes a child again?

When will the boy get help?

When he needs it?

 

Years have passed,

Since the boy cried there,

The bed he knew was now gone,

The ceiling tiles were empty and clean,

The boy had now grown to a young man,

And his eyes cried for those things less pitiful.

 

His eyes then,

Had cried away the stars.

 

A fire burned long ago,

As the ashes of the young boy’s belongings slowly turned,

To winding smoke,

Rising,

High into the night’s black atmosphere,

Stretching to the stars above.