Pearls Before Swine

Candle light  was the only star on that evening.  The wind was moaning in the night, burdened from afar by journeys long untold.  The wooden floor beneath the bed creaked, ready to give out without a warning.  For at that moment, it was bearing the world on its boards.  A woman cried beneath a multitude of blankets, lost in the sheets.  Lying beside her was a life so tiny it could not even open its eyes.  So it slept.  For three days.

The boy sat on the rough carpet.  He looked up longingly at his father, who stood like a watchman on guard.  Pleas were met with stone cold steel.  Little wooden blocks lay discarded, forgotten.  Tension hung in the air, a fog with no intention of lifting.  So the boy lowered his head.  And he sighed.

The woman was worried.  Her son never cried.  The man was worried.  His son never talked.  The young boy was worried.  Who would clean up that spider web in the corner?  It served no purpose, just like him.  

The woman was angry.  The school rejected her son.  The man was angry.  His son was rejected.  The little boy was angry.  He did not know how to hold a pencil.  No one ever taught him.  He did not know what to expect.  How could he have known?  The teacher lost her patience after two minutes.  She was growing tired, just like him.

Days crawled by with the moon on their wings.  Clouds slithered on, grating against eternal blue.  The boy, however, paid no mind to this phenomenon.  He waited by the door for his father to come home.  He was coming home.  He was finally home.  But the boy looked up and was met with a barricade.  A block in the road.  The man threw down his luggage and trudged to the kitchen.  The boy was left behind.  So he poured his eyes out.  But nobody saw.

It was high time a gift was presented.  So the boy got on his hands and knees and scoured the kitchen.  Utensils were laid out neatly in a row.  Chairs were transformed into footstools in seconds.  And the boy earned his keep.  He made pancakes and orange juice and cinnamon toast.  He did it all by himself.  But there was still the rolls.  He knew the recipe by heart.  So he turned on the oven.  Alas, sad fate...

Mama and Papa stood over the wreckage of their lives.  Some furniture refused to give out in the unrelenting blaze.  The captain had already filed his report.  Just another poor soul buckling under the weight of it all.  There would be no funeral, no service for a deserter.  But in a better place, a miracle occurred.  The divine math is that one equals all.  So the heavens rejoiced.  An angel retuned.