The Ride

The sadness surrounded the boy, threatening ambush. Thinking back to his final teen years his mother is crying. Her only son had days before he left for Iraq. Maybe she knew something the boy did not. Perhaps she was mourning the boy.

Did she know he would not come back entirely himself?

Oh, the joyous smiles he would flash with confidence. Jokes he told would instantly lighten any mood.

Were these moments perishing before her eyes?

He was absent to the conversations taking place deep in his mother's heart.

This drive seemed longer than usual. The young man, not old enough to buy a drink but old enough to take another's life - according to his country, was growing impatient. In his eyes life was just beginning. In his mother's his future seemed uncertain. She asked him various questions about hypothetical scenarios with which the boy answered confidently:

"If you die can I have control of your body?"

"You don't care if you die for another country?"

" Do you know how much I love you?"

The questions annoyed the young man. But, the intention, the purpose of those very questions, made him feel loved. He understood his mother cared. He knew she was worried. He could not, however, fully understand the full extent of the worry.

Now, years later, thinking back to these moments, he remembered wanting the drive to end. Now, in retrospect, he wishes the drive was longer. He wishes the time he spent with her was endless. No length of time would be enough as mother and son.

After a couple tours in combat it seemed like words exchanged between the two had become those of a civilian and a soldier. The boy in the car would soon reach his predetermined destination. The man within that boy would never settle. The man now shifts in and out of the void ‘society’ calls darkness.