Hussain Khan

Determination glazes his eyes as he bends over to his work. That is where you will find him in the day, at work, beads of perspiration dripping down his forehead as he calculates and examines and rationally thinks through. He is the definition of concentration, thoughtful and sincere.

His brown hair swept in waves on his head, his eyes tell stories and he has a writers’ hands, his words are puzzles to the blueprint of his mind that no one has constructed yet. He disallows people from coming to close to him, he is a raging fire that burns throughout the darkest nights and although you may stoke it, you can never come to close in fear of being burned alive.

His laughter is an echo off walls that are broken and half-constructed, raw and loud, his face is old but his smile is young, makes him look childish, carefree, everything he is not. His mother finds him by her side whenever the day or the load gets too tough, his father finds him a steady boy that will one day become a steady man, and his siblings depend on him for reassurance. He is the very definition of a golden boy.

His biggest crime is that he will never speak his pain, he will hide himself away in his sleep and cry out to none, he will insist on being strong and not letting anyone take care of him, after all, that is what men do. He has built walls around himself and refuses to let people see the garden that grows inside him.

He is a leaf, absorbs so many colors and reflects only green, so many personalities, so many thoughts and desires but shows only what the world wants to see because that is the only one that could ever be considered correct. He is so adamant on being correct and being proper, he wants so badly to be a good person, he is to stop at nothing until he reaches that. He has long reaches his saturation point, long since suffered at the hands of expectations but still he does not give in, he will not until he has reached his complete and total potential, all the goodness he knows is in him.

But he is tired, god dammit, do you not see that? Do you not see the bags under his eyes from the thoughts of being himself that keep him awake at night? Do you not see the headaches he will not complain about because he does not want to admit that he has thought of escape that will never be his? To be or not to be, to be free or to be good, he is trapped, but he had made a decision, he will do what is right.