Point of View Writing

I stand in the barn, cold, wondering if this is how he lived. Cold hay clumped together in a bed; stray corn kernels thrown about. A small ladder leading up above the potato closet. Is this where he could have slept?

The cage filled with potatoes, so full it’s about to burst. Just like the bomb burst and killed him and the others. I don’t know why it had to kill him, of all of them. More than anything, I want revenge on the others, the other Americans, for killing him. 1864. Two years after the bomb that blew him up. Yet I haven’t recovered. How can I? He is gone. After living in my house for seventeen years, I let him go, and now he is gone.

I climb up the ladder, standing on the roof of the potato closet. Potatoes. Is that all he ate in that horrible place? I know I’m not the greatest cook, but even I wouldn’t serve him plain potatoes.

Not anymore.

All I want is him back, just for one more day. Another hour, just so I can tell him what I wanted to say. I climb higher, up the second ladder, into the small room up at the top. Perfect for living in. His room was so much nicer, a light blue, filled with the toys he grew up with and grew out of. They are all I have left of him.

Why did he go? The country was suffering, yes, but he couldn’t change that. But Johnathan always believed he could change the world. He always thought the best of people.

Look how that ended up for him.

I sit in the room for a few more minutes before I climb down, the metal ladder rattling. I could have gotten a better one, if it worked out for him. We could have paid. But I am left with no money, and the boy is dead.

I will never get him back.

Johnathan, oh, Johnathan. My stupid, stupid little boy. “I’ll take a risk, I’ll change the world!” Johnathan had said, the day he left my house. “Just don’t die doing it,” I had joked.

It’s not so funny anymore.

Now that Johnathan is gone, I have lost everything. I no longer have a will to keep fighting. He is gone now.

What is anything worth anymore?