essex harrison | district seven | cb two | fin

It rained the day he was born. It was pouring, the sky was cleaving itself in two, thunder and lightning a percussion of sound, and a baby boy came into this world as silent as the dead. They thought he wouldn't make it, but he did the unthinkable and survived. He wrote his fate then, just as he writes it now. Spilled ink on a page of history, a pressed leaf on a page. 

His nights he spends with an old punching back in the attic - right fist, left fist, right fist, left fist until his arms were too heavy to lift and sleep claimed him. The percussion of his fists against the bag like thunder wakes something inside of him and he feels free. 

His days are spent on the prairie - the silence of the rolling hills and the whistling of the wind a song that his heart knows like its own beat.  He sketches the landscape, watching and waiting for the horses. They move together as if they are all in sync and he watches, dreaming of freedom. He touches one once, if only for a brief moment before being thrown off, its breath warm against his hand. The muscles of the wild horse flexing as it paws its hooves on the cold ground, the dust settling on them both. 

He dreams of riding a horse away from here, away from it all. He dreams of thunder and lightning and rain to break the silence.