He used to have a baseball glove, before, you know he died. I own it now. It was real special to him, it really was. He used to write poems in it to see at the baseball games when there was no batter.
The leather is worn out. It used to be light brown, the color of coffee sprinkled with cream and milk. Now it is dark, like wooden dark. Not ebony but pine tree wood like of dark. You could still read all his poems though, all in green ink. He’d never use another color.
The poems are everywhere, up the finger, down the webs, between his palms, and encompassing the rim. Not all of it was his though, most were. Frost, Poe, Williams, Smart, Macari, they were all there. Not only are there poems in that glove, but sadness hangs in an air around it. So young, he could have been something bigger than just a baseball player or a poem writer; he could of reach somewhere more than school.
His name was Tony. He died before, eight years old, so young. Of leukemia, on his deathbed he handed it over, his precious glove. I still remember the smile he had on his face that day, July 18, 1946. His head in its little heart shape was glowing, not because of the reflection of the screen that could only play bad soap operas, but it was a natural glow, an inside glow. Even with all the tubes and needles he was still smiling, even with the lack of his hair wich we all loved he was still smiling, in that tiny room filled with all of us crying and weeping he was smiling. Bringing a smile into such a room, whose green light puke walls hold the stench that hospitals have that’s supposed to smell like clean yet it smells like a fake try to make alcohol. His smile was pretty much what kept us alive. I still remember his red head. He was a real red head, not a ginger or dyed but natural coral red. We used to go golfing together; he could be 100 miles away and you would still know he was there, his hair was that red.
Not only as he a red head but he was really smart too, much smarter than me. Such a shame he died. All his teachers wrote to mom, to say how a pleasure it was to have a kid like Tony in their class. They weren’t just writing bull like most do but they were serious, you ever had him in your class and you’d be the same. His sunny disposition I still charming, probably hangs around with his past teachers, they loved him they really did.
No matter how much sadness hung in his glove, his warm smile stayed there. In the glove, in the green ink, in the leather, in the poems it stayed there. Tony wrote many, some weren’t his. Some Frost others Angelou even Bryant. But the ones his own were fabulous, no kidding. Most he wrote about me or Daniel, our big brother. Others he wrote about the family or holidays or even baseball. He wouldn’t write sad poems though, he didn’t like it, but he still did because they were part of him. He barely wrote about himself, there were a maximum of four poems that he wrote about himself and in three of those he included me. Even in the one about Rosen, Grandma’s dog, he included me. The dog loved him a lot yet he wrote about her final good-bye, to me. I knew he loved Rosen with all his tiny little heart, she did say good-bye to him after all he was the last one to see her before she died yet he wrote about her last good-bye to me. It went a bit like this:
Sun kissed fur
With welcoming blue eyes
Leaping, jumping,
All over Stradlater
Licking his face,
This was the last day
For Rosen
The last breath in the house
Came from her
Licking Stradlater
