I wake up and my house it’s empty. Not a single soul roams the place. I’m used to this, it happens every morning. My dad is not home, well, he never is. My mom is working, or at least that’s what she tells us. So I leave. There is no point of staying home. It has no light, no food and no proper roof nor floor. There is only one bed, for my parents. I just sleep in the pile of dirty clothes that I make. I honestly prefer that. It is my space; it is the only place in the world that I can consider mine. So I go down the hill and meet my real family. We are all 10 and we have a lot of fun together. We are brothers, we do everything together. We smile, we frown, we laugh and we cry together. And there is an old man across the road, sitting in the same stool since I have memory. His white beard and his long yellow nails take all our concentration. That’s why we go and sit to listen to what he has to tell us. We spend hours, maybe the whole day listening to that man. He’s our father, at least that’s what I feel. He loves us, we love him, and he looks after us…what else do I need? Sometimes we leave to ask for money, we wash some cars and eat with that money. We come together, the six of us and join all the money we have to buy food for everybody, like a family. After we buy food and eat, we save some for our dad, and when we give him the food, he thanks us and tells us more stories abo life. And when the sky becomes dark, everybody has to leave. So, sadly I start to climb the hill again. I look behind and dad is still sitting there, as if he was waiting for us to get safely home. I get to the door of what I have to say is home and get in without knocking. I hear a gasp and see my mom and a man in the bed, which didn’t look like my dad at all. She starts to talk to me, I think she’s apologizing. But I don’t care what she has to say, you can’t destroy my family more than it is already destroyed, so what the hell. I keep walking and see my pile of clothes…MY pile of clothes. So I smile and remember my family: my brothers and our dad, and lay down thinking on the wonderful day I’ll have tomorrow.
