Write What I Know

Bittersweet Children's Adventure

Write what you know, someone said. No, no, says another too easy and tame, write what you don’t know take the risk all the same! I knew a kid named Jimmy, he lived next door in a house identical to mine. We moved away when I was 9 or 10 and aside from a couple of visits, I never saw him again. One day I heard he died. Somehow a bullet found his brain, but I don’t know why. Maybe he could no longer take the pain of every day and every night. But I could write about what I know and what I don’t. One day a delivery truck stopped by and it was filled with cake and pie. Jimmy snuck onboard then hurried by and stuck into my hands a pie, apple as I recall. We got caught both him and me, my dad put me over his knee and I cried. He got the same, which he denied… But I grew up and somewhere he got left behind. I don’t know why, I don’t suppose I ever will. I’m sure it can’t be as simple as a stolen pie, but maybe. Who am I to say?

I don’t know this next boys name, but once he went to play in the rain. An innocent adventure to be sure. He and his friends all laughed and splashed until he got too close and in a flash… He disappeared right down the drain and all his friends stood and called his name, which as I said I really don’t know. They found him three days later floating in the nearby river. He was naked that’s what I know they wrapped him in a sheet. There were a few pieces missing, even turtles have to eat! But I sometimes wondered as I fell asleep about the things I didn’t know. How long did it take, how far did he go? What did he think or try to say as from this life he was swept away? I know it haunted my dreams for quite some time there in the dark in a pipe filled with water and debris and me!

So recently there was a marriage of someone close to me. In just a few months a baby will be. Born into this life of promise and adventure, but this is only what I know. What will be I really can’t say. I can only hope and dream and pray. I know in twice the time that I’ve been alive, I won’t. I’ll be quiet and still and cold. I don’t know what will be left behind to remember me if at all. A stone perhaps or a bit of prose. But it does haunt my dreams and trouble me. What we leave behind and what will be. I hope her life is filled with plenty and that her dreams all come true. But I really don’t know, do you?