sjbouza
05-13-2007, 10:46 AM
This is a "poem/really short story" that I wrote back in 1998. It was inspired by a little sticker with a little boy staring up at gumball machine. Read it and I hope you like it. Let me know what you think..PLEASE. Leave some comments about it. Check back I will be posting more poems later on...I have SEVERAL!!!!
ENJOY!!!
JUST ONE PENNY
by Scott J Bouza
© 1998-2006 SJB
They entered the lobby of a small cafe', a father and his son. An escape from the bitter cold. A small alleviation to lessen the pain. The boy's eyes affixed instantaneously across the lobby. He ran as his father watched.
He couldn't accept that his son was ten. The child; so small, fragile, so frail. The boy he once knew, heathly, strong and so full of life. That child is no more. Clothes that once fit, now hang torn and filthy like rags on his tiny body. A painful momento of not having enough. The father's mind drifted, to recollections of past days. Images in his mind so realistic...yet so far gone. Remembering his son's laugh. Hearing the screams of joy. Seeing him running and playing. He was happy just to be a child. To be his son. Now, he was forced to be a "man". How, at only ten? Why? Those were agonizing questions. No answers were forthcoming. Fate had sealed thier lives.
The boy stood absorbed. "Just one penny," read the sign on the gumball machine. However, the boy knew. He felt the all familiar hand come to rest on his shoulder. The hand of his father. One that once not so long ago held up his world. Now that strength is gone. No more are the days of football in the backyard. Chasing grasshoppers across the driveway. All now only distant memories. How the boy yearned for those days. To once again feel the grass under his feet. To be a kid again. Simply to just have things the way they were. But nothing is simple anymore. Most of all he desired to have back the father he once knew. The boy would trade all his memories for that one wish.
As he gazed up, his small green eyes could see the torment etched in each and every wrinkle in his father's face. He hesitated, not wanting to ask the question perched on the edge of his lips. For all to well the answer was already known to him. "Maybe this time," he hoped against the uncertainty in his mind. "Daddy please," the boy emplored. As a tear coursed its way down the boy's pale white cheek, his little finger pointed anxiously at the gumball machine. His father's heart sank deep in his chest. The pain becoming inconceivable. The thought of not being able to give his son the most inconsequential of things. It ripped him deep inside. Like somthing tearing the very soul from his body. As the boy studied his father's face. The anguish he could see there was enough to answer his question. The father just couldn't bare to speak the words anymore. No comfort could he offer his son. A boy that deserves the world.
He took his son's frail hand in his. Then slowly led the boy away. Without looking, he could feel his son's eyes still staring back at that machine. Choking back the tears, the father's misery grew more deep-felt. He swept the boy up into his arms. As they re-entered their world. The words echoed in his mind, as if being screamed by a thousand voices at once..."JUST ONE PENNY." Those words burned in the father's mind, like hot embers of a still raging fire. For the reality was, when you have nothing except one another, just one penny is one penny to much.
Lotsa love,
Scott
© 2006 SJB
ENJOY!!!
JUST ONE PENNY
by Scott J Bouza
© 1998-2006 SJB
They entered the lobby of a small cafe', a father and his son. An escape from the bitter cold. A small alleviation to lessen the pain. The boy's eyes affixed instantaneously across the lobby. He ran as his father watched.
He couldn't accept that his son was ten. The child; so small, fragile, so frail. The boy he once knew, heathly, strong and so full of life. That child is no more. Clothes that once fit, now hang torn and filthy like rags on his tiny body. A painful momento of not having enough. The father's mind drifted, to recollections of past days. Images in his mind so realistic...yet so far gone. Remembering his son's laugh. Hearing the screams of joy. Seeing him running and playing. He was happy just to be a child. To be his son. Now, he was forced to be a "man". How, at only ten? Why? Those were agonizing questions. No answers were forthcoming. Fate had sealed thier lives.
The boy stood absorbed. "Just one penny," read the sign on the gumball machine. However, the boy knew. He felt the all familiar hand come to rest on his shoulder. The hand of his father. One that once not so long ago held up his world. Now that strength is gone. No more are the days of football in the backyard. Chasing grasshoppers across the driveway. All now only distant memories. How the boy yearned for those days. To once again feel the grass under his feet. To be a kid again. Simply to just have things the way they were. But nothing is simple anymore. Most of all he desired to have back the father he once knew. The boy would trade all his memories for that one wish.
As he gazed up, his small green eyes could see the torment etched in each and every wrinkle in his father's face. He hesitated, not wanting to ask the question perched on the edge of his lips. For all to well the answer was already known to him. "Maybe this time," he hoped against the uncertainty in his mind. "Daddy please," the boy emplored. As a tear coursed its way down the boy's pale white cheek, his little finger pointed anxiously at the gumball machine. His father's heart sank deep in his chest. The pain becoming inconceivable. The thought of not being able to give his son the most inconsequential of things. It ripped him deep inside. Like somthing tearing the very soul from his body. As the boy studied his father's face. The anguish he could see there was enough to answer his question. The father just couldn't bare to speak the words anymore. No comfort could he offer his son. A boy that deserves the world.
He took his son's frail hand in his. Then slowly led the boy away. Without looking, he could feel his son's eyes still staring back at that machine. Choking back the tears, the father's misery grew more deep-felt. He swept the boy up into his arms. As they re-entered their world. The words echoed in his mind, as if being screamed by a thousand voices at once..."JUST ONE PENNY." Those words burned in the father's mind, like hot embers of a still raging fire. For the reality was, when you have nothing except one another, just one penny is one penny to much.
Lotsa love,
Scott
© 2006 SJB