His whole life was based off of one saying.
The idea that
Family was everything.

He soon found out
That this was not true.
It was all a lie.
It was all an act.

Until a few years ago,
He didn’t know this.
He thought family was everything.
He never questioned it.

More recently,
He has realized what has been going on.
There was yelling and screaming;
But there was also silence.

The yelling and screaming
Meant they still cared.
They still wanted the family to be a whole.
He knew this.
He didn’t like it.
But he knew this.

He knew that the yelling and the screaming
Was the first step downhill.
He didn’t want to believe it.

The screaming never stopped.
It was always loud.
He would take the dog for a walk
Or go upstairs.

But all of a sudden there was silence.
Instead of a house full of life,
A house built for a family,
His house was cold,
Empty.

He knew what that meant too.
It meant they were done.
It meant that they didn’t care.

The family was not a whole.
It was broken.

His siblings seemed like they cared.
But after all the silence,
It was hard to care.
The silence broke them.

For a while it wasn’t silent.
It was chaotic and loud,
Not screaming and yelling.
But somewhere right
In between.

The time in between was
Good.
It was healthy.
It made his family seem whole.

But that didn’t last long.
It started happening again.
Now there was screaming and yelling.
But not the parents.
It was at the kids.
His brothers.

All he could do was watch.
Until one day,
He got tired of watching.
He wanted to leave.
He wanted to get out.

But he couldn’t.
He was too small, too young, and too broken.
He couldn’t get out.
He went upstairs with his brother
It was the best but still somehow
The worst.
And hoped the silence would begin again.

They went upstairs and tried to fill the silence.
There wasn’t anything to fill it with.
They just sat up there.
Quiet.

This is how it was.
He and his brothers knew this.
They accepted it.
It was how it was going to be.
They tried time and time again
To do something about it
But they couldn’t.

Years later came college,
And college allowed him
To move away.

This was all that he could do.
He was out.
Of course he went back.
But only for holidays,
Or when work brought him there.

But he never chose to go back.
He didn’t want to experience the
Unbearable silence.

Never again would he have to
Experience
The unbearable silence.