modestmaya

He always wanted to say things, but no one understood.He always wanted to explain things, but no one cared.So he drew.Sometimes he would just draw and it wasn't anything. He wanted to carve it in stone and write it in the sky.He would lie out in the grass and look up in the sky and it would be only him and the sky and the things inside him that needed saying.And it was after that that he drew the picture.He kept it under his pillow and would let no-one see it.It was a beautiful picture. And he would look at it every night and think about it.And when it was dark and his eyes were closed, he could still see it.When he started school he brought it with him.Not to show anyone, but just to have it with him, like a friend. It was funny about school.He sat in a square brown desk like all the other square brown desksand he thought it should be red. And his room was a square brown room like all the other square brown roomsand it was tight and close and stiff. He hated to hold the pencil and the chalk with his arm stiff and his feet flat on the floor, stiff,with the teacher watching and waiting. And then he had to write numbers.And they weren't anything.They were tight and square. And he hated the whole thing.The teacher came and spoke to him.She told him to wear a tie like all the other boys.He said he didn't like them, and she said it didn't matter.After that he drew. And he drew all yellow and it was the way he felt about the morning. And it was beautiful.The teacher came and smiled at him"What's this?" she said ."Why don't you draw something like Ken's drawing?"Isn't that beautiful?"And it was all questions.After that his mother bought him a tieand he always drew airplanes and rocket ships like everyone else.And he threw the old picture away.And when he lay looking at the sky,it was big and blue, and all of everything elsebut he wasn't anymore.He was square and brown, and his hands were stiff and he was like everyone else.And the thing inside that needed saying didn't need saying anymoreIt had stopped pushing. It was crushed.Stiff.Like everything else.