The letter
Rests
On the corner of the dining room table
Near the fruit bowl buzzing
With the occasional
Fruit fly stuck by a pin in the wall.

They leave it
There

As a mere reminder
Of who
Their son really was
Before their fall.

On May 3rd, 1987.
A sideways grin
Curled moonward
Toward a cloudless sky.

The doctor claimed
He was the most
Beautiful boy
They had ever seen.

Flattery
Was not something
The mother was
Accustomed to.

Liar, the mother thought.

The father
Fainted
At the sight
Of his wives
Ability, for
It made him
Think of his own mother
And how
They never saw
Eye to eye.

The father, he realized,
Had always been in the wrong.

The son
Allowed no fools
In his life.
He worked with his hands
Toiling land
For older men
That could no longer
Bear the heat of the sun,
The grit of the dirt,
The absence of comfort.

There is nothing better
In this life
But to be tested, the son believed.

The son killed his first man
On a dare
For a little cash.

A bad old friend
Dared him one-hundred dollars
The son wouldn't cut the throat
Of the boy
Who was cheating on the friend's girl.

For the son,
It was just another test.

The blood and the sounds
The dying boy made
Didn't bother him; it was the
Feeling of life slipping out of their body,
And how the son realized
One day,

That would be him
Tucked away in some cell
With little food
Little water

No family to say goodbye to
Or son of his own

To live on.

On the day
Of his execution,
He wrote his parents
A letter.

Mail it
After my death, the son
Asked the guard
Who's name
They had never learned.

It tells them
What I should have been,
What I could have been,
And where to find the proof."

The guard,
Being a guard,
Did what he was told.

They found
The son's manuscripts
In a hole
Under the bleacher's of
The football field
At his high school.

They told the story
Of his life,
Their lives,
And many lives that,
Unlike the son,

Would go on forever

As true words do.