“Commonly men will only be brave as their fathers were brave, or timid.”
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden
The young man walks into the room;
It is dark inside, and still as a tomb.
The air is thick with dust and mites;
The walls are bare and devoid of lights.
The rest of the house is much the same;
His home now, but not in spirit, only name.
He doesn’t want it, can’t pay
To keep it up, but he has no say.
“This is your inheritance, this is your heritage,”
They said, not caring about its apparent age,
Nor that this was the place
Where Dad took his final pace
Off the chair and into a rope.
(Mom had left; he had no hope.)
The young man walks across the floor,
Leaving wide open the door.
The stains on the carpet are still clear;
No bleach will do any good here.
He stands on the spot,
And knows he’s got
Only a few hours
Before he’s missed by the powers
That be, who wait for his name
On the papers to claim
This house — his home.
Even though he tried to roam,
his heritage called him back
With attack after attack.
First Mom, then Dad,
Then his sister, too sad
To stay on this earth,
Leaving him alone with no worth.
It’s his turn now, he knows,
To leave his body for the crows.
In that room, on that spot,
On the carpet where a dot
Of death still shines —
(Read between the lines)
— the young man takes out his gun,
And now his story is done.
Er, well, sorry this story (poem?) is kinda depressing. I’ve finally joined the masses and listened to Hamilton, so death and legacy and duels and rhymes have kinda taken over my brain, heh.
The prompt came from Yeah Write, which is doing a year-long short story challenge for 2016! I’m a bit late to the party, so this is Week 8’s prompt. You can read all about the challenge HERE!
“Empty room” by Kraetzsche is licensed under CC BY-ND 4.0.
