50 The Meadow What It Takes for Boys to Suffer Justin Tran Three boys decided to build a house, they would not live in, within the depression of two quiet, but windy hills beneath the grey, sometimes dark green skies. In the distance, one saw formations the grotesque signs and flesh statues of the hallowed and rotted husks of other boys, their heads down in silent prayer to the ignorant ashen and parched earth. They first broke the brittle branches of the once possibly lush black trees, but they wouldn’t know, or care to know as they continued to build the crooked foundation of their little home. Until another boy, skin weathered and torn with empty, uncaring, brown eyes that only look through a person, sat down underneath a crackling black bark of a hollowed tree. His haggard and weak breaths were steady. There was an object lodged within him that shouldn’t be, a weak and useless poison of slow efficiency. But he was not bothered, frankly he was annoyed when he ask them, “Why are you building a house you will not live in?” And the three answered in unison, “Why not?” This flabbergasted the dying boy. “What is the point of a house if no one lives in it? Won’t the house be angry?” The first boy, splashed in crimson, stated, “Houses are just objects. They cannot be happy, sad, or mad. They just are.” But the dying boy shook his head. “A hammer will choose to break easily if you abuse it.” The second boy, who was missing large chunks of his body, chirped, “We built it so we can give it back to the world, an art of our own making.” But the dying boy frowned. “Why would the world accept your art when you take away its natural being?” The dying boy then looked at
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