The Burden Of Early ManHood

A three-wheeler cuts through crisp Adirondack air, Dust trailing like memories refusing to settle. Seven years old, with a rifle too heavy to bear, Not just its weight, but what it asks of me to level. Baldwin Road stretches behind like a timeline, Each inch etched in the muscle memory of youth: The lawn I mowed, the woodpile stacked in line, A child building something solid amid unspoken truth. Father's departure, an invisible fault line That cracked open all I knew of love and home. Not with explosion, but a quiet phone call's design, His voice matter-of-fact as he chose to roam. "Males are bound to cheat," he said from a hotel bed, Words becoming prophecy, a generational curse. At fifteen, I became the man of the house instead, While mother sought solace as our lives grew worse. Electricity flickered; sometimes on, sometimes not, A perfect metaphor for our precarious existence. Early lessons taught: nothing stays, whether you want it or not, Each connection a risk, each bond a calculated distance. The three-wheeler cuts on, through memories like a knife, I am both child forced to grow and man seeking to heal. This map of survival charts the roads of my life; Wounds carried, passages hard, yet somehow still real. Roads untraveled are sometimes the most important journeys, The paths not taken echo loudest in the soul's quiet yearning.