Window to a Soul

BANG! The ear-piercing scream of a bullet shattering my world. Life escaping my father's head in a river of broken dreams. Tears falling into the running waterfall of blood. Pieces of my own heart cracking and breaking under the pressure of my despair. Red rapids angrily running toward the cold, smoking barrel of a silver revolver laying in his motionless hand. All of his pain gone with the pull of that trigger while mine only begins. The revving of engines as rush hour traffic passes obliviously by. Lives consumed by road signs and spilled coffee -- Angry at the thought of returning to another miserable day at work. Blood trickling down the driver's side window of the silver rental car he could never afford. The masses only angered by the sight of a stranded vehicle with some stupid motorist that might now make them late for work. While my life is falling apart. A random radio announcer talking about slow-moving traffic on Mt. Haluapai Rd. An inconvenience. His life. He believed he never mattered. And in the end he is but an inconvenience to the monotonous trek of unhappy people to a job they hate even more. Teenagers on their way to school, angry at their father for saying no to their curfew extension. Fathers angry at their sons for not filling up the car after a late night drive home from a party they weren't supposed to be at. Cursing each other as they pass by my father's lifeless body. No movement in the silver car except for the lake of blood pooling in his lap, around his hand. The same hand that I held as a little girl -- the same hand that kept me safe as I crossed the street. The same hand that showed me love, only now shows me hate. I hate that hand that placed a tiny bullet in the chamber of that gun. I hate the finger that showed me right from wrong that was carelessly placed on the trigger. The mind that thought so many prideful thoughts that willed him to end his life now laying in pieces on a crimson-soaked window. Falling at his feet. My tears falling at my own. I hate this man I love so much. I hate this bullet, this hand, this gun. I hate this mind that shows me this sight I never witnessed. Horns honking, sirens blaring, tires screeching. Drowning screams no one ever heard. Alone. A car. A dream. A love. A pool of invisible tears flooding my feet, bringing me to my knees to drown in a river of blood that is not my own. Looking through a window of a soul that no longer exists.