Understanding Us

He’s sitting in a dimly-lit and stuffy room, cramped and with a low ceiling. The only lights are those that are coming from his computer and the small neon bulb that hangs above him, nothing else will he allow—too much light hampers and frightens him. A thick nearly cloudlike, haze of smoke fills his room—equal to that smoke that filled the valley of Bull Run but this cloud is not of gunpowder. Its cigarette’s—cheap and thin ones, he could afford no other—and their smoke has been his oxygen for nearly as long as he could remember. Nervously, shakily, he reaches for another one and lights up between sipping his coffee. Java brew for liquid, cheap cigarettes and potato chips for food: this is life to him, one that he lives most lonely.
Loner—that is the one word that could accurately describe him though its many other variations could suffice. Alone, outsider, misfit, oddball, lonely, wallflower, hermit—take your pick, he’s had them all, every one them he proficiently emulates. Does he mind being this way? Not too much. Sometimes he might, when he takes an occasional walk outside and sees the happy couple sharing ice-cream in the open veranda. He will sneer at them then—most bitterly—and walk away dejectedly, his countenance then comparable accurately to the rain. He has other friends at home: his endless books stacked on the table. Though collecting dust by now he’s read them a thousand times, laughed with each character that’s laughed and equally shared their heartbroken tragedies. With these persons he’s comfortable because he knows them so well, can almost sense their subtle magic’s when reading the page. He knows that theirs no betrayals within them. They will always remain his friends.
There are endless reams of paper upon his table, sprinkled finely with cigarette ash, the words upon them scrawled so hastily that it seems that the one whom penned them had a nervous fit when employing his pen. The lines are thick and hard-pressed almost as if they were a persons passionate embraces to a lover, that they craved to be written. Yes, this he craves and, for this exact reason is why he languishes away in his self-imposed misery. Why do they laugh at him when he stares at the puddle in the middle of the street? Why do they cast him out from church because of his refusal to wear a tie? He was only observing them, he never wished to bite. All he wanted to do was set them free!
Madman? Perhaps he is, perhaps he’s not. His mother thinks he is but all artists walk a line between genius and insanity. The tightrope he walks is labeled “bastard” with a fine sugar- coating of “perverse” between its strings. He doesn’t wish to walk it but he must… else he would suffocate. Misunderstood? Most of the time he is, though most do not think him so; a person he is not though, he is too far alienated from humanity…..


He’s a writer…