diamandis -- coals'

[ryan]

[ryan]

i.

You sat there as you tried to fumble around with the needle that had been delicately intertwined in your first two fingers. This was the second time this week that your older brother had ripped his overalls. You hadn’t even thought of how to express your displeasure for such a thing, but there he was, standing there with a shy smile as he handed them to you for the second time.

You thought about how much different you were from your family. They all had rough exteriors, even your younger sisters, and there was something that spoke volumes. They knew that you did not fit in, but they tried their best to accommodate for that. Your father still thought you weren’t the idea of a prodigal son, but he could at least admit that you acclimated to the life of a coal miner well. His perception would always be polluted by the memory of you picking up a sewing machine rather than a pick axe, but that was all surface level.

You wondered if there was ever a chance that your father’s eyes would not feel like daggers as they stared at you. Maybe you just reminded him too much of the woman he loved. He was never rough, or unfair to you, but you could tell there was just some sort of ambivalence, and as long as you did what needed to be done, then he didn’t care what you did with your free time.

However, was that a life to live?

Probably not.

[ryan]

ii.

Maybe it was because he wanted the world for you that now he wasn’t sure how to give it. You knew well that he rested more on his shoulders then he wanted to admit. Seven children, all of which survived through the carnage that war brought, now how to navigate the world. He knew that his tutelage would not be enough to satiate the masses, and seeing as you did not share the same mindset that he did, he was even more at a loss.

What were you to do?

You were raised by soft hands that had been ripped away from you. You did not know how to be aggressive, or violent, or even temperamental. Maybe you know how to adapt, but that was it. You hated going into the coal mines, because you felt like the creativity you had been openly allowed to show would never come back to the light. What if you died down there? Physically, of course, would always be a fear, but also mentally. You did not want to become the boy who had dreams to only die at the end of the proverbial stage.

You thought you had so much more to live for.

[ryan]

iii.

Its not like others understood you like your mother did.

Sometimes you tossed and turned late at night after a long shift and wondered what would have happened if she had somehow survived that day during the war. 

Youd sit up at night, staring at one of your brothers as they found their peace with their eyes closed. Sometimes youd stir, and they would tell you to stop creating unnecessary ruckus. You couldn’t help it, because you were angry. Angry because there wasn’t any sort of way to get the closure that you desperately wanted. 

Closure was always a funny word to you. Only spoken by people that never know what it meant to have something left ravaged and ripped open. The art of closing something, pulling two parts together, even by force, had been fundamentally impossible if you were being honest with yourself. 

Sewing, or stitching, or any sort of action that created something would never be the same as trying to piece back together a world obliterated before you could even blink.

[ryan]

iv.

It pained you to watch everyone else quickly move on.

However, even in your silence you knew well that wasn’t the case. Sometimes you were watch your father head into the room where he slept and pull out a pillow that your mother stitched by hand. He would look at it with sunken eyes before caressing it and showing it more care than you had ever seen him have. 

Sometimes he’d leave the door open long enough to just for you to see him stoic. You could tell that he wanted to cry, but he could not bring himself to do it. However, before you could even cross that threshold, he would shut you out both physically and metaphorically. The sound of the door locking made it very clear that he did not want you to see his own grief, and you wondered why he always had to be a private man.

[ryan]

v.

You both shared the same amount of scars right?

Sure, his might have been physical. Months and years of painstaking labor had been wrought on his skin. Sometimes they looked like they went deeper. Like the aftermath of whatever slice had always lasted longer than just the initial pain that had been inflicted. 

Maybe it was because you had never felt what it was like to have a piece of coal scratch against your skin. A pick axe dropping from your hand and onto your foot. A rock that had formed in just the right way to gouge itself into your hand.

Maybe you had a layer of thicker, tougher, resilient skin that hadn’t been put through the ringer like your fathers.

[ryan]

vi.

However, you did know what it was like to be scar(r)ed.

A dual word that you knew too well. Scared, like the emotion of not knowing if someone you loved wouldn’t return from the last time you saw them. 

Scar(r)ed emotionally. Internally.

Told that you would never be like the rest of your family because you were just too soft. Of course, they never held this against you, because your mother had done her best to shield you from the othering that might have commenced in the house. She always favored you, even more than your sisters, which always went against what society had known. Fathers should always be around their sons, and Mothers with their daughters.

But you even knew that did make sense. Because not everything was black and white. There was a duality in that notion, and if the situation had been perfect, you would have rejected it.

Maybe that is why you couldn’t care less.

Because your scars had always been deeper than people knew. You were not the typical boy, and you didn’t want to be the typical boy. 

Being bathed in amber and stone did not always mean you would always be beautiful, or the image of perfection that everyone wanted.

Because not even amber would be found in such a way that it could be excavated without a few cracks.

Those imperfections.

That was where the real beauty was.

[ryan]

vii.

What even was beauty?

A foreign word that had reared its ugly head into the vernacular of a child that had been suffering from grief and loss?

A concept that had been nearly stripped away from a district that already had been going through so much?

A void of a dream that once was?

Was this place ever beautiful before the war?

Maybe. It depended how you looked at it. Right? 

The art of being beautiful and having beauty were two separate things. At least, that is what you think as you tried push the hair out of your face. The night sky had always been something that you looked up too. An endless void that captivated as much as it saddened you. 

Maybe its because you used to spend long nights with your mother, strapped to the chair while you used your hands to create something magical.

You sure did miss that.

[ryan]

viii.

So looking at your father, and realizing that you both were still in mourning, made you realize that he was trying his best. He did not know how to raise you, but he did know what it was like to love someone.

You both shared that, in love and loss, and that always spoke volumes to you. Even as you went into the coal mines day in and day out, that amount of care, even though he still had no clue how to show that to you effectively, kept you there at least. If he was willing to try, you knew that you were willing to try as well.

And even as the days passed, none of it was truly easy.

However, nothing was easy in the world you lived in now, and as much as it eluded your understanding, you could at least try. Trying was only half the battle, but it was the half that seemed to push you to commit. Committing was the other half of the battle, and no matter how much you did that, you knew you were losing.

But admitting that? That was your saving grace.

[ryan]

ix.

Sometimes you wished your father had understood that, even though years had passed, he still did not know how to commit to raising you, sometimes leaning on your brothers to try to help. However, they didn’t know either, and neither did your sisters.

They always treaded cautiously when navigating the treacherous waters that made up you. 

And you did not apologize for that, but maybe that was because you did not define it. How could you? Thirteen was so young to lose someone, and three years later, the aftermath was still an atomic bomb dropped to create a crater.

And you would fall in every time.

[ryan]

x.

You had heard stories of people still trying to fight where it was possible, even your two older brothers, who had both been plagued by scenes of war that you did not wish on your worst enemies.   

Sometimes you thought way too much didn’t you? You didn’t have enemies, even though sometimes your dad had said that there were people that always wanted to shake things up.

Maybe that could have been a way to explain your mothers death.

That was too easy though, and as much as you wanted her to be a martyr, she wasn’t. Because that would mean that someone wanted her dead to prove a point, and that just wasn’t a case.

She was a causality that no one saw coming, and that was the brutality, and even the beauty of war.

It was not an easy art to learn, and even as you tried to pick up the pieces, they sliced into you the moment you held one in your soft hands.

[ryan]

xi.

Did that mean you stopped creating? 

No.

However, you didn’t do it as often as you wanted too. Sometimes it was just hard, because the action of creating reminded you of her, just as much as watching you do it reminded your father of what you lost. 

Sometimes you would make scarfs in your spare time, because they were always a necessity, even if it wasn’t winter, because they could be used as cloth to wipe the dust from your face in the mine. As you would sit there after a long shift with your sisters and knit, your father would just sit near you all and watch.

It brought in a small extra income, and it brought a piece of mind to the world you all shared. 

You watched your father stand up and just shake his head. He would leave to his room and just close to the door, and sometimes you wondered why he always wanted to suffer alone. It made it harder for you to sympathize, because he always wanted to be a private man. You believed that pain was never unique to the individual, because there was always someone that could share it.

Fragility was just another causality of war?

[ryan]

xii.

You didn’t think so. However, you were known as the fragile boy. A faberge egg like conscious that hadn’t been pushed over the edge quite yet. 

Even as you took your pick axe and learned to swing it down, you did not show too much aggression, because you didn’t have anything to be mad about. 

Just sad. Distraught. Pained. Wanting. Longing. 

This was not you, but it had to become you. That’s what scared you? Didn’t it? Your older brothers could see it, and even your father could see it. However, no one dared mentioned a thing because it was always easier to ignore the problem in the Stone family.

They had all been so good at it.