Bachelor

Twenty years old and his joints hurt like he was eighty. What kind of man was he?

Stretching out the length of the sofa, his knees popped at intervals until fully extended, and even then they throbbed from the pain of three jobs and the early onset of arthritis. Life was not a kind thing. Sighing, he turned on his side and stared across the mostly empty room to take in the sight of the barren, whitewashed walls of his apartment, observing the blank surface with neither appreciation nor disgust. Decorating was something his mother did.

Outside, he could hear the windchimes a previous tenant had attached to the porch overhang. When he opened the windows during the high winds of the spring, the light tinkling reminded him of harsh realities softened by gentle hands and bleeding knees that were far less important than the feeling of a foot kicking a ball at the obnoxious kids next door. Of course now it was the dead of winter, and he knew the chimes were swinging with the onset of a snowstorm. But, like the white walls, it was something he had come to accept rather than notice.

His wrist throbbed vengefully.

He could always go home, he knew. There wasn’t a day gone by where his mother didn’t clamour to have him back under her roof again, claiming he was too young to live on his own (twenty was not too young). If he did that, the pain would lessen and his work load would drop, but she would be hovering over his every movement. He preferred the pain and the work. What kind of man was he? The kind that had to leave his house to stop himself from throttling his mother in her sleep. She would never have plain, white walls. She would never collapse on the couch after a long day of work. She would never forget to eat. She would never have a half-empty, one-bedroom apartment because she couldn’t afford anything more.

He loved being a bachelor.

~ by eeratka on April 25, 2008.