🔵 By Thomas Riffenburg. Photo by lauragrafie.
I’ve traveled down a road of time, filled with experience and wisdom, joy and sadness and here I sit at the end of the path so far, pausing to look back. What I’ve always assumed would be a beautify walk, I find the road I’ve chosen anything but. All my best of friends were to walk with me, a group of brothers, confident and strong, sure in our faith of understanding the game of our chosen life. I find now that they’re all gone, some dead, some so far separated from me, each in their own solitary pit, wasting away till they die. I can watch through the path of time as one by one they fade away…. I can still remember my best of friends like it was yesterday. 14 years old was the age he came around.
By 15, peer influence caused him to commit his life with the rest of us, we became closer than brothers. He couldn’t have known, or even believed, that he would regret that day. I remember the joy and pride we all felt on the day he completed his first mission for our brotherhood, his badge of honor was a tattoo tear, a sign of worth and respect. The celebration became an elevation of status, he became a man from then on, age didn’t mean nothing to us, heart and loyalty were our standards, that was when he also got his first gun, the tool of a man. There was no fear left in him, confidence and pride blossomed to a whole new level, selling drugs, doing drugs, robberies, assaults, whatever it took to demand respect for us men, whatever was needed, making people bleed for the smallest slight towards us. Life began to make his mind unclear, it was always clouded by drugs or excitement, anger or lust, but I think pride was the worse. He knew it all, wouldn’t listen to no one not even his brothers, for he knew best, in one ear and out the other. It didn’t matter who you were, stranger, brother, even his blood related family, if you stepped out of line, you got hurt. He thought he understood the life, but he was naive, believing all he wanted to do in life was run the streets, instill fear and respect in every one he met. Then one day he got caught up, arrested, the natural end result if that life, now he’s got life in prison, stuck in a cold damp cage till he dies. We were all naive to the life, and that’s a damn shame, but the reality is always the same, death of life in prison. We still hold our heads up high, but when the lights go out, and it’s just us and the darkness, all we got left are scars and heartaches and our heads re anything but hanging high, alone they hang very low….
That’s my homie’s story, though I suppose it’s mine as well. The cycle never ends, never gets better. Leave this life alone, and be better than my homie or I ever could be.