Mr. De Beer.

Enclosed you will find three letters your son wrote to you. One of our students found the letters hidden behind a brick in the stairwell (Brian chipped away the mortar surrounding the brick, hid the letters and replaced the brick, we have not yet found the tool he used to chip away the mortar, he claims to have used a rock) and turned them in to me. I instructed the students on letter composition on Tuesday July 9th, and these letters were discovered on Friday 12. Let me assure you we do not “beat” any of the children here at Dominion Christian School. We administer punishment with the use of a paddle, yardstick or a wooden switch, none of our teachers have used a sjambok for several years now.

Brian is generally a good student but the contents of these letters indicate has some delusions about punishment and how his teachers view him. I have made copies of the letters and sent them to the superintendent and the review board along with my recommendation to enroll Brian in remedial therapy sessions. The superindentent will be in contact with you regarding the cost should the school decide counseling is in Brian’s best interests. I have great affection for all the students in my classes and wish to see them succeed in their studies here at Dominion and in life. As you are no doubt aware, maintaining discipline and order is vital for any successful education. I am open to correspondence should you wish discuss the contents of Brian’s letters or his overall progress.

Sincerely,

Mr. Brentcroft.

Dear Mr. deBeer.

Papa, I am alone. You are the only person in the world who loves me or has ever loved me. All the teachers hit me. Mrs. Kempen hits me on the hands with a ruler. Mr Brentcroft put my head under the bookshelf and hit me with his rod. I didn’t cry. I wasn’t crying. He hits boys who cry a second time just for crying but I wasn’t crying and he hit me a second time. I love you Papa, please take me away from here. Mrs. O Henry pulls my hair by my ears when I make a math mistake.

Sincerely

Brian

Your Son,

Brian

Dear Father.

I love you. I am much stronger than when I lived with Mrs. Peterson. I can help you now. I can hammer a nail and I can use the big saw to cut tree branches. I can climb high. I know my letters. Please let me go back to live with Mrs. Peterson. She does not love me but I saw you every week. I am dying here, alone with no love. Mr Brentcroft hates me, he beats me with his rod every day. The kids hate me, I am not allowed to play with them. I go behind the school to the Mulberry tree. Mrs. Kempen made me stand on one leg with my hands on my head for the whole class. She hates me.

Sincerely

Love,

Your Son Brian

Dear Mr. De Beer

I love you Papa. I love you more than anything. I love you more than anything in the world. I love your beard and your eyes. Do I have eyes like you? I will never talk about my mother if you don’t want me to. You are the only one who ever said a nice word to me. I am alone Papa. No one cares if I die. Only you. Please save me. I love you. I will be good. I will do anything you say. I am almost 8 now. Please let me show you how strong I am. Please take me away.

Love,

Your Son,

Brian.

I read,

and re-read

Weeping Willow

Six

or seven

Times

I thought of how to compliment

your

Lines

Maybe I could

Post 23

comments of long division

To boil your

Stew

and hope you wouldn’t

Chew on that too much

but rather

Slurp

It like me

Reading

your

Poet-Tree

Enticed

Me to attempt an

Imitation

is the sincerest form of

Flattery

Will get me

Nowhere

I’d rather be

Than in your

Comments

Don’t allow

Line breaks

So I’ll

Devote

A post

To cloria

With a lowercase

See

Her Multi-Titled

Peace is

Below

The belt

and

Beyond

The Pale

Skinned Poet

Writes well

And I

Hope

She continues to show it.

@cloria

https://theprose.com/cloria

https://theprose.com/post/275875/if-i-were-a-poet-tree-i-would-be-a-weeping-willow-or-how-gretchen-saved-my-life

Maybe she really is all she needs,

But the basest part of a low man pleads

For the higher, fairer sex to conform

To a sexist critique, and doubt her form

Would ever be complete, without a man

To cherish her flaws and be her life’s plan

The writer of this poem is in love with a girl who began a journey of self improvement, along her journey she wrote the poem in the link below. He was disheartened that her self-improvement meant she would learn to love herself in a way that allowed her to leave him. He selfishly hopes she can’t continue her journey, and will stay flawed, and with him.

It’s six lines with 10 syllables each line.

https://devillinestone.com/im-all-i-need

@DevillineS

In your azure Iris I see

A mathematician staring back at me

He lost his mind trying to tattoo

An equation for beauty, in henna, on you

Now on your hands, your body, ink

For geniuses to study, but they think

It’s no math proof only a numeric

Jumbled mess and him? A lunatic.

Something happened to Brandon today. I could see it in his shoulders and brow as he walked to the car. His brow? Since when does my boy have a brow?

I’ve seen thousands of shades of developing emotions on his forehead: shock, excitement, awe, pain, surprise, delight, joy, horror, admiration, dejection, amusement, frustration, confusion, etc. etc. but never, ever, can I remember thinking of Brandon as having a “brow.” Yet there it was, something heavy weighing on him, some middle-aged office worker’s sense of resignation, settling on my boy’s brow. His attitude looked like it aged 30 years since this morning when it went bounding out of the passenger’s seat. Now, one short school day later, he plopped his backpack in the backseat, slinked into the car, buckled his belt, and looked at his hands in his lap.

No story. No daily report about what happened during lunch, or what jokes Mr. McCullough told during history class. Silence.

“How was school?”

He looked out the passenger window and mumbled fine. An image of my brother staring vacantly out the window of the rolling South Shore Line to Chicago - with his brilliant creativity numbed into oblivion by antidepressants - flashed across my mind.

“Did Mr. McCullough have any good jokes today?”

“Nope.”

“Did it feel like a long day today?”

He shrugged.

I decided not to press, he’d open up to me, he always did.

At home, Swift greeted him with cheerful eyes and a wagging tail, Brandon dropped to one knee and hugged Swift’s neck. We got a Golden Retriever when Brandon was nine, we were reading a children’s version of Gulliver’s Travels at the time and Brandon immediately dubbed him Jonathan Swift. We insisted it was a family dog and we would all choose his name together, but from that moment on, Swift really belonged to Brandon. The family tradition of naming pets together at the dinner table (which required a unanimous vote and could be a laborious process as every family member possessed an absolute veto) was just a rubber stamp. We recognized Brandon had that mysterious and wonderful connection with Swift that people form with some pets but not others.

Brandon hadn’t slipped out a clue about what was wrong on the drive home and maybe, just maybe, Swift's excited, happy greeting was exactly what Brandon needed. He hugged and nuzzled Swift’s neck for extra few seconds that seemed significant.

“Can I take Swifty for a walk? Brandon asked.

“Sure.” I was glad to hear a request. “Ok, go change your clothes and we’ll walk him.”

“No, can I...just me and Swifty?”

The question dropped heavily between my son and I, my surprise added weight. I told him to go change and he began trudging toward the stairs. It struck me that his body language wasn’t the exaggerated dejected posturing designed to get his way, my boy was actually sad, and it wasn’t a fleeting sadness, replaced at a moment with the life’s events, he seemed preoccupied. Two steps up the stairs he turned and said, “Please Dad?”

“Go change, I’ll think about it.”

He went upstairs, I texted my wife:

“Brandon asked to walk Swift by himself”

“Alone?”

“Yeah, just him and Swift”

“Why don’t you follow him?”

“I think we should let him”

“He seems sad”

“It’ll be good for him”

The fact that I had time to send three messages without a reply meant she was hesitating, she must be deliberating, and so was I. Brandon was twelve, he’d never walked the dog alone before. I thought about our walking route; our neighborhood was quite, peaceful, hardly ever had any traffic, but there was the pair of bulldog’s behind the tall brown wooden fence. I tried to imagine Brandon passing the barking bulldogs, he’d be afraid right in that spot, but he’d be fine, they never got out, and Swift was well behaved on walks. Brandon already held the leash everyday so would it really be that different? How would Swift react without my presence?

She messaged back:

“How far?”

“Just the regular route, and I’ll time him”

“It’s up to you”

“And, I’ll lecture him about what to do”

“Are you worried about it?”

“Not at all, but I wanted to check with you first”

“Ok”

“I’ll let you know when he’s back”

I was slightly surprised to find myself excited for Brandon. He came downstairs and I proceeded with instructions: regular route, 20 minutes, no delays, cross the street if there are any unknown dogs, be firm with Swift, you walk him he doesn’t walk you. He nodded, he wasn’t excited, or wasn’t showing it, just ready.

I won't describe my anxiety while my son walked the dog. I won’t tell you the worst thing I imagined happening, and I won’t tell you how many times I checked my watch. I won’t tell you about the beer I drank, or the whiskey I poured and then hesitated to drink, thinking what if he doesn’t return on time and I have to drive around the neighborhood, but finished anyway and poured a second. I won’t say how many times I looked out the window or if I opened the front door, listening intently for dogs barking in the distance. I’ll only say that Brandon returned safely, within the allotted time frame, with a small smile on his face. His sadness hadn’t exactly lifted, but he wasn’t preoccupied either, it was lighter, as if Swift shared part of the burden.

That night when I put him to bed I was ready to quiz him about his day, to prod him until he delivered the bad news, or whatever it was that had been bothering him before he walked Swift, but he beat me to the punch.

“Dad.” It was that opening statement I had been hoping for all afternoon.

“Yeah?”

“Is it ok if I have some secrets I only tell Swifty?”

A youngish man sits in a grey office cubicle. His bosses say he has potential. His bonus is enough to make the year seem worthwhile. But a year is composed of months, and months are composed of days, and days are composed of minutes, and minutes composed of seconds, and he’s been wasting every second, sitting in that grey cubicle.

He doesn’t think:

This is a slow death,

And he doesn’t think:

The slowest suicide.

Every morning he opens his email and the urgency begins, his screaming subconscious only manages a deep, depressed sigh, and the ritual commences. His sapped creativity yields in silence, a numbing schedule of meetings surrounds his corporate altar and again today, he offers his own creativity, his own volition, and bows before a corporate God.

He doesn’t think:

This is creative immolation.

A corporate God he can’t quite identify. It lives somewhere near the stock price, it takes possession of the CEO from time to time and “where two or more [board] members are gathered” there God is. It’s a hungry, jealous God, but subtle. It steals all his time, but encourages a “healthy work-life balance.” It whispers “you’re doing this for the family” in his ear, and when his best friend asks why he’s wasting his life in that grey office cubicle he hears himself say, “It’s a good job, it’s a good company, I don’t hate it, it’s for the family,” and he tries to remember when he started justifying his job to himself, and why?