The Unexpected Cycle of Shared Miseries

I sat on the hill behind our house,
And from it, I could see Lake Kiva shimmering in the distance.
And the line of trees in the forest,
How elegantly the trees swayed in the wind.

Our old neighbor Jack had an orchard,
An orchard of red apples.
And from atop the hill, I could admire its beauty.
The sparkles and the dance,
As it reflected golden in the sun.

Beside me sat my best friend,
We had trodden, prodded and skidded together since birth,
He was a soulmate.

He was telling me a story,
A story of repression and oppression.
A story of omission and lack-
A story so cold, I shuddered not of the misty air around us.

But his sharp words,
And the terror-stricken aura surrounding them –
My eyes were wet,
I was heaving with palpitations,
I was holding his hands.

And I could feel the grass in between his fingers.
It was soft and lush,
Unlike my heart, that was now breaking apart,
Piece by piece, word by word.

He spoke of his father’s yellow belt,
The one I always saw hanging in their dark sitting room.
He spoke of the faded scars on his broad back,
How he cried at the end of his father’s butt cigarettes.
And I could outline the now healed burns on his leathery, hairy arms;

He spoke of the cuts on drunken days,
I didn’t know a knife could cut so deep.
I didn’t know words could wedge up so much hatred in a man’s heart.

He spoke of his disfigured left ear,
How it came to be on a night full of stars in the sky,
How he fell on the ground, and from it he could see the full moon in the east.
How he couldn’t breathe at a road’s intersection,
How the limp in his walk was born,
How his life was an endless loop of anxiety, pain and scares,

And I realized;
We drank poison from the same vine,
Because that too, was the story of my life.