A boy lies ill in bed while his sister plays. |
The boy lay sick in bed on a balmy summer’s day; though his sister went to play, Death loomed above his head. He asked his mother that same day what made him deathly ill, and why his Sister frolicked, still, while he wasted away. He looked out from his window to the grassy field outside; at his sister's sight he dared to cry that he had reached his low. His mother gave the answer long: “It’s mere fortune of fate; it does not choose nor does it wait, it knows not right or wrong. “Though such a young man as you are ought not to have this plight, fate is bound to drop its might without a thought or care”. He fully heard his mother and so turned his head to nod, although he thought it odd that fate declined another. His skin clung tightly to his bone with nothing inbetween — one with working eyes could glean that he was not for long. He stared out through his vacant eyes — empty voids in rings of blue — with pensive face, as if he knew that he could always die. “What point is there in living without leaving but a trace: when I with Death meet face-to-face, I haven't done a giving. I'll be a wholly useless matter in half a decade's time; I'll be less than worth a dime before I've clumb the ladder. “I’ll hardly be a person past ‘the sickly boy who died’. Will I be known on either side I'll go to when I'm gone? Who’ll sweep by once it's my time: Satan in his wretched wagon, or angels in sweet chariot? And will they come after I die? “Are there really sides immortal as you, my mama, say; or do the dead rest in their graves in an endless slumber restful? Where do all the souls and minds for babies like my sisters come? Are all these new souls taken from the dead after they die?” Then he tired laid his head, closed his eyes in wait to die, and sunk into the bed. Soon the father came back home to prepare for him a grave; but he and all the others craved to know where he had gone. It was to them a sad affair; but afterward the mourners went to accept the dead boy and forget. In a few years' time nobody cared. I suppose that that's the fact of death. |