A Cowboy in the Pictures, a Pilgrim at Heart

It’s easier for him to be sad than happy when there’s a pen in his hand and sleep in his eyes.

The burdens of a sick mind made real by the written word, a monstrosity of a boy’s own creation, the blinking cursor beckoning the young one forward, begging for more of the pain that sets him apart.

He fancies himself a freak, the only way he knows how to be himself.

He sees himself on the edge of a dark wood, a beacon for all the nasty things that hide in the brush.

Their fangs gleam and their talons glimmer in the light of a pale moon, and it's midnight and dawn and dusk and all hallow’s eve and friday the thirteenth and everything terrible that the freak with the pounding heart and dripping nose deserves.

He is the lone rider without a horse, the unarmed gunman, the new sheriff who misplaced his golden badge.

A red riding hood, lone hero, abandoned child, victim of neglect carrying a wicker basket filled with the CDs that his father passed down to him and the clip-on earrings his mother let him take from her jewelry box.

He likes the CDs with the loud drums and strange lyrics because they were his father’s. He likes the big, enamel pearls that hang from his ears because they are now his.

Hands reach in to pick at the contents, but they’re swatted away by a boy with a heavy soul and a knack for interloping.

In the dark of a lonesome night, he is uniquely deplorable and inexcusably wretched.

He prays his destination will cure that, a clearing with a steeple that houses an occupied holster.

In his room, wearing cowboy pajamas and reading a western under the covers with his flashlight, he is twelve years old.