Poinsettia Boy

Poinsettia Boy

Word Count-1544

Prompt- The Little Match Girl



         Winter bore down on the valley like a wolf holding its prey until the dredges of life slip away. Cold bites through even the thickest of jackets and the overcast skies had people on edge, like the storm about to charge from the mountains, even though the holidays were just around the corner. Joy seemed like the farthest emotion from everyone’s heart. A young man stood on the corner of a crowded on-ramp with a box full of wilted poinsettias and sign asking for two dollars a poinsettia. The boy shivered in his thin jacket, not suited for the harsh cold of Utah, much less a chilly day. He looked into a murky puddle created by the melted grim filled snow in the gutter. He noticed his greasy looking blonde hair that seemed much darker than it really was. That there was smudges of dirt on his jeans and shirt from the box of poinsettias and other activities he didn’t want to think about just now. He doesn’t look up to meet the eyes of the drivers any longer, even though his eyes were the brightest blue and held warmth that couldn’t seem to come from their chilly appearance. Under the pressure that life piled upon his shoulders he was a handsome young man that was just shy of 18, but could easily pass for far older in spirit. Suddenly he was struck in the side of the head with an explosion and a burning sensation and the stale, acrid, burnt smell of gas station coffee. It mushroomed out from his head and fell like acid rain across his face and chest, soaking the shred of a jacket and steaming like the shame in his heart. He just hunched lower and the sign fell just a little lower like his gaze. The laughter from the car pelted him like angry brickbats and fire off a long “FAG!” like the bullet from a sniper’s gun. He held firm and doesn’t move. The light changed and cars sped off and no one helped. He checked his watch and picked up the box of poinsettias and headed to the overpass. The morning rush is over and he would return for the lunch rush.

         Under the underpass he checked the money in his pocket, four dollars, his mother wouldn’t be happy. Not that she was ever happy with him anyway. The burn from her cigarette still stung from the preious night’s drunken tirade, and ended with her “friend” in his bed and her purse better off than it was before. Not that he received any of the money, but it shut her up for a little bit and he got off with just the one burn. When he got up that morning she had left a note on the box of poinsettias that said if he could sell all of them by the end of the day he wouldn’t have a friend in his bed that night. So far he was not doing well. He sighed and tried to think of something warm other than the coffee bomb from the car. His mind wandered to better times, when his uncle was still in the picture. His uncle was always able to keep his mother from drinking and doing drugs, and on the right medication. Since he died from AIDS his life had been sent to the firing squad. Mother was the first and last to pull the trigger of the gun that blasted him, and still had more ammunition in store. He shivered again and blew into his thinly gloved hands, clapping them together trying to get the feeling back. He sat down and pulled his knees to his chest and started to think of his uncle again. His uncle made the best Sunday dinners. He closed his eyes and hugged his knees closer as he recalled the smells of the roast, oniony and beefy with a slight spicy bite. The baked potatoes with the smell of butter, sour cream, and chives battling for their turn to make your mouth water. And the dessert, rich, dark, chocolate cake with a scoop of homemade vanilla ice cream so creamy that he swore it came from a magic cow he kept hidden. A single tear slid lethargically down his cheek as if matching his somber mood. His uncle was the only one that understood him, the only one that never took advantage of him, and the only one that really loved him. His uncle knew what it meant to be gay, and that it didn’t mean that he would have sex with men for money like his deranged mother thought. When he opened his eye his uncle was sitting beside him with his arm around him, warming him slightly and making the sting from the cigarette and coffee less painful. He couldn’t hold it in anymore and fell into the embrace and cried, but wasn’t held up. He opened his eyes and realized he had passed out on the sidewalk and was freezing. He shivered more.

         Snow crunched under someone’s feet. He lifted his head to see who was walking towards him. His heart faltered, his lungs constricted painfully, then worked double to catch up. The man walking towards him was a regular “friend” of his mother’s. The long greasy hair hung limply by his face that contorted into a yellowed, black toothed grin. As he approached he adjusted himself in an exaggerated flourish while holding full eye contact and licking his lips in what he thought was an erotic manner. The young manner shuttered and dropped eye contact. The man kept coming towards him, knelt, and picked up a poinsettia from the box and threw it into traffic. He laughed as he walked away. Anger welled in the young man like magma in the crater of a volcano. Hot, thick, and waiting for an escape. He stood up and looked for something to spend his rage on, the box of poinsettias seemed to call to him. He reach in the box and grabbed two and flung them at the wall of the overpass. Their flimsy plastic containers weakened by the cold cracked on impacted and dirt erupted in imitation of the fury of his anger. He reach in again and again to the box of poinsettias, flinging the flimsy, wilted plants at the wall, torrents of dirt flew into the air clouding it with his rampage. As he reached into the box to grab the last poinsettia he stopped. He magma rage cool to a cold hard pumice stone that ground his fear into a rough, raw, harsh realization. He was never going to make the money his mother wanted him to. He was never going to get a hundred dollars for this wilted, anemic, crappy faux-poinsettia. He collapsed on the sidewalk and shivered until it looked like a spasm. Tears clung to his eyes, afraid to be shed. And he stopped shivering.

         Warmth. It wrapped around his shoulders and spread through him. It touched his core in a safe caress, the first time since his uncle had passed. He opened his eyes and his uncle was behind him, smiling. He closed his eyes and let the feeling sit with him. He remembered the time his uncle had him while his mother was in rehab. He had a home that was clean, he had clean clothes to wear every day, he had meals that were homemade, and he was safe. He made it to school every day, his grades started to improve, and started to make friends, real friends, not the people his mother brought home. It stayed that way for a while even after his mother got out of rehab that time. They stayed with his uncle for six months after she got out. It was the best time in his life, until his uncle got sick. He looked back at his uncle who was still smiling at him and felt lonely and cold again, and tired. He closed his eyes and lay down. And shivered slightly.

         Rough hands shook him. They shouted at him. Sirens wailed at him. There was so much noise. Lights were strobing, and the smell of peoples breath close to his face made him want to throw up even though he hadn’t eaten anything all day. He opened an eye and saw he was surrounded by blurry people, he tried to swat them away, but his arm only flopped weakly. He didn’t care anymore. He didn’t even feel cold anymore. The blurs shifted and he felt like he was floating. The gray blur of the overpass with dark patches flared to life with bright white light. He closed his eyes again and the safe feeling enveloped him in a warm cocoon. Just as something pinched his hand and he felt something wiggling under his skin. He tried to pull away but something held onto him. Weight and heat piled on him. He opened his eye again. That’s all he had strength for and saw his uncle standing next to him. He was glowing. He smiled kindly at him and bent down and kissed the young man’s forehead. Everything blurred again and the white light surrounded him. A feeling of peace washed over him.