My Boat (Short Short)

My Boat

I walk away.

Every time I see it, I simply have to walk away from it. It is an ever so painful reminder, even to this day, that still, deep inside my soul exists that stranger that I have long sought to forget.

What I remember most of that day was my older brothers empty eyes as he slipped below the waves. He never saw it coming and in hindsight, nor did I. He would never imagine that I would be capable of such a terrible deed no more than he would that he would befall such a terrible fate.

My mother decreed me the hero who tried to save him but I knew that I was no more than the monster who had slain him. My father rewarded me with it and so I had, indeed, succeeded in what I set out to do, committing what some might call a perfect crime.

It was my boat. It was always going to be my boat.

I often wondered what he would be like as much as I wonder what I would have been like had I not done what I had. His kindred spirit, always there, reminds me of the debt I owe my conscience. Always one to have the final word, he was, and so I make payments every day.

On rare occasions when I return to the shores of our childhood home, I see my boat adrift on the sands and I simply have to walk away.