Walls Can't Keep the World Out

At 8 years old, beside his favourite cousin, this boy is struggling to be quiet. The adults around him all solemn, heads down, facing the casket. Quiet condolences, sniffling. This boy, at long last, finds the situation and the behaviour of everyone around him to realize he needs to be still and silent.

At his grandmother's. In the house, the food laid out. His favourite foods smell like heaven. No one is paying attention to him and a quiet spot in the tv room to eat.

Outside the grim winter light, icicles hanging from the roof, beautiful and sinister.

When spring comes it's like a soft paper thud at the door. The evening paper arrives this way too. And the girl with the smile and straight hair comes to collect the weekly payment. The screen door springs exclaim as they stretch open. The air is fresh and lawns are green again.

Weeks and weeks pass this way. The familiar comfort of Dad being home and dinner being made and waiting for it among toys on the soft carpet in the safest place on Earth. Light of setting sun through the open door to the western view.

Summer nights in that steel town, the hammering of the metal works could be heard through every neighbourhood for miles. The windows would be open all night to cool us down with only fans to help.

To feel this good or this safe again.

You never, ever will.

Walls can't keep the world out.

The first day the newspaper didn't come it wasn't so big a deal. It's likely no one said anything about it. It just wasn't there when the front door opened with the strain of the springs. The evening light was there. the setting sun. The fresh air.

Days later when newspaper was arriving every morning again, everyone in the city knew this girl was missing. Her younger brother, bowl-cut and eyes down, would deliver it and collect the weekly payment.

The Earth stopped spinning when I'd see him at the door.

This young girl snuck out to meet her much older boyfriend who also lived just a few houses away.

Rumours of hard drug use. Rumours of this and that.

She was found weeks later in a field.

Neighbours would later tell me her head had been separated from her body.

I only saw her brother once after that. Crossing the street away from our house. No bag of bundled newspapers to deliver.

I don't know what happened to the family. If they moved away or just disintegrated into thin air from the pain.

A lot of darkness would come into my life in the short years following.

The feeling of being safe in the world eroded profoundly. And permanently.