thing beautiful in an industrial sense, but something tragic in a human way. I kept the beers in their holder tight to my side, and only raised them to keep my balance as I walked the straightest way to the city limit. I walked towards the highway, listening to the same cars I did as a child at my dad’s wondering who was drunk and careening without any care. I walked and walked into the moonlight, only seeing shadows of tree branches quivering across the dirt. It seemed to take forever to get to the highway as opposed to hearing it. I continued towards my father’s house, knowing that he would be there. It was late when I reached the front of the trailer park; I hopped the fence to cross the highway and saw few cars on it. When I got to the trailer I remembered everything from it. The trailer, front to back, had a kitchen, living room, spare bedroom, washer and dryer, bathroom, and his master bedroom. On the walls he kept pictures of himself in the navy, and a blanket hung up in the hallway with pictures of different jets landing on carriers. I could remember everything, the nicotine colored walls, the smell of his cigarettes that hazed across the entire trailer, the phone in the kitchen that we would use to call our mother, and most of all the hatred he had that felt stronger and stronger as I grew up around him. I could see that this man was holding me back, choking me into becoming nothing. He had always been a fear that cut through my life, and had made me off-centered in my existence. My brother had stepped over him, continued on into a life of his essays, for only a short time. I thought of the many times in my life that I wanted to feel free, to not only imagine myself in my brother’s words, but to really feel all my senses drenched in something not of this town. I couldn’t I thought to myself, because my father had branded my existence with an emptiness and darkness that was too bold to let me escape. I looked at the trailer and saw it for what it really was; it was a symbol of the hate constricting my life, holding me back. I clenched my hand and stared at the trailer with my eyes becoming glassy and strained as I kept them open without blinking. I wanted it all away from me, I wanted to watch it burn, with the fire starting in the back of the trailer, his room blazing with the heat hitting my face. I wanted to feel for once a warmth from the doublewide, to see the back wall open up and to watch the fire seeping from his room to the blanket in the hallway, and then onto the spare bedroom that my brother and I slept in,
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the one that I cried to my brother over and over on how I never wanted to be there. Finally, I wanted the fire to speed up and split the trailer in half, with the ends raised higher into the air as if a funeral pyre to showcase his hatred to everyone. I closed my eyes after imagining it all so vividly, and I then unclenched my hand and raised one of the bottles. I let it fly, cut through the air, and the bottle shattered the window of the door. The second broke as it slammed against the window to the left but was held back by the screen. I watched his light come on, and a figure come through the living room. I felt my anger building, this one dark being was the only thing withholding my life, as he rushed to the door I saw and heard him slip. He opened the door and picked himself up with the doorknob as some shards fell off him and others stabbed into his skin. He was swearing into the night, and I stood there watching the tattered man, the broken and worthless aged man yelling with that same deep voice that made me fearful as a child. The light from the living room hung only on his body and I stood still in the darkness. He didn’t see me, I suspect he thought the assailant had fled, but I watched him curse and it did nothing for me. I looked at his bleeding arms, with him standing in his pajamas, and started to feel that he had never truly had any control on my life. This man that had been my greatest fear was nothing but a shell, founded on a hate that had nothing to do with me. He was his own demon, and I had given him the power over me, but he was not what was holding me back. I turned and walked back toward the creek next to the highway as he continued cursing the night. I reached the creek and listened to a car murmur across the highway. I walked next to the water until I reached the edge of the park. The town’s light no longer hit the same clouds as I walked away. I looked up to the tree line over the highway and imagined the machines and the smell, and let them dissipate as my feet turned away from the border. I would leave now, to be a part of my brother’s stories, and when I wrote to my brother I could tell him of myself, and he’ll know by the postage I made it.