Eric Gauthier
Mrs. Meadows
English E-F
Oct. 5, 2011
Poetry Among the Mitt
I thought I could hear his voice saying the poems under his breath.
I felt that when I read along the green words just as he used to during his games I could
feel him reading them with me.The glove was worn and old. He loved that glove he got it cheap just like I got my hunting hat , but still he adored that glove. It brought me comfort when it lay on my chest. As I breathed in and out it rose then dropped. I held it close to me. I clutched on to it as if it were a trace of him left behind. It was only a trace of leukemia that they had found in Christopher. All that killed such a strong person was a trace, a minute fraction, almost nothing. The night he died I locked myself in the garage and smashed all the windows in there. My hand began to bleed when I looked down at his glove and thought that Christopher would not do such a thing in anger. My heart sank in guilt I just couldn’t help it breaking the windows and all, but I knew Christopher would not want me to be all messed up like this over him.
I still respected him, he was so intelligent and so young.
He was so kind I can still remember his dark brown eyes glowing whenever he was writing a new poem onto his glove. He was left handed. I remember his left hand moving back and forth in rhythmic motions with his fingers wrapped around that green pen. That is all I think of when I see a baseball mitt green pen and Robert Frost poems.
The leather was worn and smooth to the touch with green ink wrapping all around it like ribbons. He would always have it with him reading the poems over and over. They never tired him. He could read them for ages, but still Christopher would find the poems magical. They brought him joy and he could make his own. He was a born writer.
I hated the thought that none of my brother’s poems would ever be written again.
The blood from the cuts along my arm seeped down staining my clothes.
I took a piece of sharp glass and bravely pulled it out of one of my
bigger wounds. It stung pretty bad, but I thought of what Christopher had to go through before he died. The whole situation made my wounds seem like nothing but grief alone.
My parents had to take me to this psychoanalysis. I don’t blame them after I busted those windows out, but they should have known how I felt. They lost a son just as I lost my brother. We should have all been grieving over the same person, Christopher.
I think they brought up all this psychoanalysis stuff to get their minds off of Christopher being gone.
I remember him so clearly he was quite tall with reddish hair that always glinted in the bright summer sun as he played baseball with his friends. You could say that his mitt in away reflected who he was and what he liked. He was a very magnetic person I always felt drawn to him, like his friends that he would play baseball with. It was hard for me to finally realize that he was really gone. That he was cold, lifeless, and dead. This horrible truth finally really hit me when we had to go to his funeral. The hearse pulled up with him.
He was in a sandy colored coffin with his head laid on a small felt pillow. He smiled in that casket of his the faint outline of a smile was present on his face. When all the darkly dressed people and family and friends began coming in to the chapel to pay him their respects. I went up to the coffin and laid old poems he had written on his chest. I figured He would still want to read them. More people then I thought came in to say goodbye to him. His teachers, friends, neighbors. They all were there. I just looked at him sadly and I just wanted to tell him how much he was loved. I know he knew that, but I wanted to speak with him again face to face. Sometimes late at night we would just talk not about anything very specific or significant, but we just talked into the night.
His sickness was not reversible. It was in his blood It would quickly spread throughout his body his innocent body. What had he ever done to anyone I always asked myself he never got angry at anyone he was so kind. There was just no way to stop his sickness.
I will never forget how focused he was when he wrote and how his happy spirit would always spread towards everyone and making there day. Never shall I forget how he smiled when he played baseball.
He was just eleven when he died he was just too young. I was not ready to bid him goodbye, I never would have been. After all life does not slow down for you in just keeps on going.
