Bricks

If walls could talk? What’s this “if”, what the fuck am I doing now? Maybe you can’t hear me but whose problem is that? Hell of a statement, even muttered. I don’t think you know what you’re saying anyway.

Kid, I’ve known you your whole life. I mean like REALLY your WHOLE life; your parents made you during a knee-trembler on one of the warmest November nights in living memory, right here, your mama’s back pressed up against me only a few feet from where your own back presently resides while your fucking jerk of a daddy thrusted away with an arm locked under each of her knees. Eight months and some odd weeks later in the dog days of August you arrived, too early for your own good but I appreciated the tenacity. You weren’t born up against me, quite, but it was close enough. The advantage of circular design, other than no one ever gets lost long as they keep a hand pressed on me, is I’m never too far from anything happening inside my circumference.

Your fucking jerk of a papa was already gone by then, no surprise there-not like I sympathize with the prick but we are all of us still beholden to our inherent nature-except this son of a bitch didn’t even have the fucking decency to stay gone. How many times did he stumble and meander his way back into your mama’s life after that? Three? Four? And after her poor broken busted-up body gave up the ghost how many more times did he return to throw a wrench in your life exclusive?

She died with the tips of her fingers brushing against me. I FELT it. I still don’t know what precisely killed her but maybe that’s for the best; I liked her, she had a strong spirit, and it’s not as if I can’t make an educated guess. This place I’m wrapped around, the whole world come to think, ain’t all that forgiving. The purest souls tend to suffer most.

Hell your papa died against me too, his back on my bricks this time, I’m not much for firing squads but he made a decent case. I don’t remember, if I ever knew, the specific crime that brought him blindfolded with the traditional last cigarette between his lips back to me but what does that matter, bastard had it coming a few dozen times over. Irony is there’s a good chance he either didn’t commit the particular crime he got that sentence for or it was some insignificant nonsense that nobody but these crazy fucks in here cares about. C’est la guerre and all that. Either way, as I’m sure you know, deserve ain’t got nothing to do it, it was just his turn. The bullet passed through his thick skull still resides in this little pockmark, right here. You could see it if you looked, it’s not too far from you, but you probably wouldn’t know what it was, nor its significance to you and your life.

I wish you could hear me. I wish I could talk to you. I don’t know if I could talk you out of what you’re doing to yourself but at least I could fucking try. You’re better than this. You don’t deserve this. This place, this whole world, well it sure as shit doesn’t deserve you but you improve it just by existing. I know you’re not the great leader type, trailblazer in this or that field, a creator or an iconoclast but...kid, you’re GOOD. An honest-to-god good person. Rare enough, that.

Of course that’s probably why you need this release, this relief, from a world that doesn’t appreciate you, care about you, or have any clue you’re even worth a damn.

I sympathize.

I wasn’t always as strong as I am now. Or as strong as I look anyway, I don’t think I ever was actually that strong in the first place.

The guy who built me, well not actually but you know what I mean, the guy who had me built, the guy in charge of everything inside the circle he made me into, the great structure he said would keep all the bad things out but was really just so he could make sure all the people he wanted to do bad things to were kept IN, he’s not much of an architect. Considering the reasons he wanted me put up it’s pretty crazy he didn’t pay too much attention to all my parts but I guess he’s pretty crazy himself so that tracks. Multiple large sections of me have collapsed multiple times over the years, mostly for no reason other than negligence. Did you know that, kid? Probably you did. You were always smart.

Did you hear me? You were always SMART! Why the fuck are you doing this?

And what kind of fucked up reality are we living in where I can’t stop you? I can’t even try to.

You’ve always been smart but I guess you were always the wrong kind of smart, right? Smart enough to know this place is wrong and smart enough to know you can’t get out, get free, but not smart enough to figure out how to make your way in here. Or maybe you just don’t want to anymore. Maybe you never did, and you’ve only recently been able to admit it to yourself.

I don’t blame you, though. I may not technically have a heart but you fucking broke it the first time you bought that evil brown stuff, the first time you stuck it inside you. You think I didn’t see it, the sale and the use and the resultant effects? I see everything, I see it all. That fucking monster who made me, who tricked your sweet mama into coming in here with the promise of salvation and sucked every ounce of sweetness, of LIFE, out of her till nothing was left? He did this. For all his claims of purity he don’t seem to mind all the scavengers within his holy circle peddling that poison you’ve grown to love so much.

And your daddy did this too; every time he left you and every time he came back too, every time you smiled up at him cause he was your hero and your world and your whole fucking reality and he returned your unconditional love with violence in words and deeds and fists? This is on him. I watched you for past few weeks and months as you decided you enjoyed destroying yourself and wanted to ride that train all the way to end of its tracks. It kills me. It’s killing you.

I don’t blame you, kid. I know what brought you here.

I just hope you don’t blame me for keeping you in. It’s fucking killing me already, and the only consolation I have for your unawareness of me as a sentient being is you’ll never think of me as your enemy. Even though I am. It breaks my fucking heart-again-but it’s true, I am your enemy. If I could make myself implode right here and now, commit structural suicide as it were, I’d do it in a second just to give you the tiniest fraction of a chance to get out. But that’s not in my power. I have no power.

For you to end up here, right here, up against me, nodding out maybe for the last time and for you to say THAT one last thing, if walls could talk. I’ve never done a single thing under my own power, never had a moment of free will, and it still feels like I’m being punished.

Kid! WAKE UP! YOU HAVE TO WAKE UP!

You have to wake up cause now there’s a chance. It’s not much a chance, it’s a pretty shitty chance really but it’s there. It's all you and I have, I think.

Someone’s coming from outside. A lot of someones actually. I can’t see what’s happening outside me near as well as I can see what’s inside but I think it’s happening. I think they’re coming.

It might be too late for you, even if you get out. It probably is. But “might” still leaves room for hope.

This isn’t your fault, kid. No more than it’s mine. We were both just poorly constructed. The men who built us did a half-assed job, is all. We were both left unfinished. I didn’t get enough bricks, you were given the wrong kind. Different but still the same.

Did you hear that, kid? That sounded a hell of a lot like an explosion. There’s another one. They’re getting closer.

Oh god. I’ve been hit. It doesn’t hurt but that doesn’t mean I didn’t feel it. Just got hit again, kid, and this time it was right by you. Right by you but not too close, you know what I mean? Do you know what that means? Kid, get up! I get hit like that again, in the same spot, and not only will it not hurt you but you’ll be able to escape!

You can do it kid! Get up! You have to! I need you to!

There’s another hit. Another. My foundations are shaking. They’re gonna blow me apart and it’s gonna happen real soon. They’re gonna put a big fucking hole in me and I think it’s gonna happen right here, right now.

I’m glad to go, I’m happy it’s happening. I never liked keeping all this shit, all these poor folks, in.

I’m falling. I’m collapsing. Don’t come with me kid.

Wake up.

Get up.

STAND.

Be true.

Beat this.

Get free.

I’m falling.

Did you just blink?

Was that twitch a step back towards life or just death throes?

I don’t think I’m gonna be around to find out.

Please kid.

Climb over the rubble that used to be me.

I love you.

Please get up, please go, please run, please fucking LIVE.

Please leave these bricks behind.