When I was about seven years old, my father took me out behind our house where our backyard met a sort of wooded forest; I doubt it could be called that but the woods were thick enough that past a certain point you couldn’t see the other side, so we collectively called it the woods. By that time I had only tread through there supervised, and my father’s massive, uncoordinated steps that hit every possible bump in the path scared away any and all wildlife, so I often believed them to be sterile. So when my father told me to stop in the grass and pointed downwards, I was in shock to find a dead bird.

I could recognize the form of a bird of course, I had seen a nature documentary when I was a child in school while a substitute covered for our teacher; it was a bird, I didn’t know the name of it though. It was a gray, almost cement like color with small red dashes across its face. I stared at it quietly, waiting for it to stand up and fly away. I asked my father why it wasn’t moving, staring up into eyes that feigned sympathy to my naïveté—feigned being the focal point. I doubt my father ever felt empathy or sympathy for me, much less love. I suppose this was his way of trying to teach his child even if he didn’t particularly care for my presence. But I stared up at him for the longest time, and he waited until I was tugging on his pants-leg, begging for an answer.

He crouched down next to me, in that way fathers do to their oft smaller sons and told me it was dead. “Dead?” I asked; I had a vague conception of the word. When I’d hear my mother’s favorite actor was dead or some sort of cowboy western star was dead, I’d hear a sigh or a groan from either of them depending on who it was. It wasn’t something they enjoyed—I could gather that much. I asked my father if he liked the bird’s movies, and he looked genuinely angry at me for a brief moment—a brief moment he had hoped I hadn’t seen but I had seen clear as day before he had taken back his composure. He explained to me that actors didn’t just die, everyone did. I asked when they’d be coming back. He said they never did. I asked why that was; he told me that was the way things were. I asked where they went, and he said he didn’t know and no one did. It shifted then, to how people die; he told me they died the same way animals did. Sometimes they just got sick and never got better. Sometimes they got hurt too much and they never healed. Sometimes they died because they couldn’t eat or drink. They died the same as us, he said. I asked if he would die, and he said one day. I asked how the bird died, and he said it hit a window and broke its leg. I asked when I’d die, imploring that I wanted to leave (I had meant the current conversation, but he took it in a much different light).

He looked at me with concern; be it genuine concern or concern for the consequences of a child’s death on him I wasn’t sure. He told me to stay outside while he called mom; I think at the time she was out getting groceries at one of those big gray block stores. I sat out there and stared at the bird. I had been roused out of my bed by my father that morning specifically to see this, and I sat down so I could get a good look. I wondered if I was going to be punished. Normally when he called mom like this, it meant I had given him “lip”. The morning dew pressed against my flannel pajamas, soaking the skin underneath. I touched and poked the bird, grabbing the leg to try and see where it had been broken. The leg looked complete to me, so I tried to readjust it to see if maybe it had just been misplaced. As I set to this task, the thing twitched. Looking back upon it it was probably just the muscles being stimulated, the last impulses of nerves kicking the thing, but I couldn’t understand that. It was supposed to be dead. It was moving. A wave of revulsion moved over me and my arm spasmed as the thing was propelled away from me. I crawled cautiously, making sure that in its alive state it could not harm me; it lay on its back, the leg I grabbed twisted in a disgusting unnatural way. Across the neck was a great bloody gash—my father had lain it on its back purposefully. Perhaps the thing had broken its leg, but that’s not how it died. It wouldn’t have gotten better, I know that now, but I thought then that my father had made the thing dead—I did not know the word “kill” quite yet—instead of what he had told me.

Did all things look like that when they died?

My father owned a singular firearm I remember seeing. It was a snub-nosed .38 revolver, one he told me he paid 50 dollars for when my mother and him had gotten married in ‘94. An old friend had sold it to him, when he sought protection for their first apartment together. It was an ugly, mass produced piece that he didn’t trust to hit something past 20 feet. I remember because he had told me to get in the car one Sunday when I was nine and we drove off to a deserted field, an hour away from home. Setting up some bottles on a piece of plywood about chest level, he put my hand on the revolver and showed me how to aim. He told me to then breathe out, and pull. I did. There was no concussive blast, no bottle breaking. Just a dry fire. He said I did good and put a round in. I remember the round being silver, an aluminum casing with a fine, sharp point on the end, that being the actual bullet. I did as he told me, and pulled down the trigger. The gun kicked hard enough to not only propel itself out of my hand, but hit me in the face as well. It didn’t break anything, but a nasty bruise was left. I went home and he got me a soda with the advice to tell my mother I was just playing ball with some friends and got hit by the ball. I told mom this and she asked where I made friends. I said out in the field dad took me too. They yelled at each other that night.

I have a distinct memory of the first time I was suspended. I was on the playground when I was 11, in fifth grade. I wasn’t a particularly large child, but kids instinctively avoided me as if I looked like I could beat them up. I was sitting on the swings; it was an overcast sort of day, one that occurred often in the first few months of spring. The memory itself is very clear. A light wind propelled my swing forward and back. I didn’t much care to actually swing as much as I wanted a place to sit that wasn’t covered in that horrid mulch. I remember hearing some of that very same mulch crunching outside of my peripheral vision; it was rare other kids used the swings, but I wasn’t opposed to anyone’s presence. I heard a snickering before the child quietly called me a faggot. I had no actual reference for what the word meant besides when one stick figure was angry at another in a flash animation, he called the other guy that and punched him. I thought I was going to be punched.

I got off the swing as if the metal was going to stick to my skin and burn me alive before I turned to face the child. He was maybe an inch or two shorter than me, and a bit thinner too; had his ploy worked, he would’ve only had the advantage of surprise. I charged him, intent on making sure he couldn’t say that word to me again while he asked if he could borrow my swing. The voice he had called me a faggot in was different from the one he had before he realized what I was doing.

Then the sentence changed to a scream, and I was upon him. I had no knowledge of fighting. All I knew is that things were dead when you made their throat red, so I took my nail and started dragging it across his Adam’s apple while he screamed, occasionally thrashing my legs to keep him down. He screamed, loud piercing ones, low cries for help for about a minute until a teacher came over and tore me off of him. She grabbed me and took me to the principal’s office, this near death-grip on my arm, turning the flesh pale around it; the clouds did not clear that day, nor the next or the one after that. The principal asked me why I attacked him. I said he called me a faggot, and at this he balked; as he gasped I continued. He had called me a faggot—this I already covered, and as one knows, when you get called that you get attacked shortly afterwards. I had to protect myself before he attacked me. The principal asked if I knew what faggot meant, and I said I hadn’t any idea, except I had seen people get called it before they got punched. He said I shouldn’t say it and I agreed.

He told me that the child I attacked—I later learned his name was Andrew or something to that effect—stated that he had not called me such a thing. I stated I heard it. We began a shouting match until he called my mother and she picked me up. I didn’t attend school for the latter half of that week while my mother fervently called psychiatrists. I sat in a doctors office about two months after that, and I clearly remember going somewhat excitedly because the office was right next to a fast food place and my mother would get me a burger after each visit. About 3 weeks after my last visit the doctors gave mom a call. I didn’t know what they said until I read the report a few weeks later when she left it out in the open on her desk. I remember my father came into the house and when he saw me sitting on the couch he gave me a disgusted look. It was the same sort of sneer I think I had when I looked at the bird after I had thrown it. He yelled at mom and said something about a “retarded son” if I remember correctly, and left the house for the night. About three weeks later my father filed for divorce.

I was taken out and homeschooled till the end of fifth grade. No one ever told me what I did wrong; I assumed I had just misinterpreted the kid’s intentions. My mother talked extra delicately to me while my father was out of the house. Sometime in July of that year their divorce was finalized. I had to testify my father had never hit me, he had taken me out to that field to shoot his gun, I had been injured—the whole spiel. It was around this time I was beginning to grow exasperated with my parents’ constant bickering, so when my mother brought up my violent outburst—I remember the term outburst being used specifically—and she said it was inspired by my father and his uncaring nature, I did not disagree. She argued that the gun, being originally meant to protect her, should come to her, and whatever ruling body presided over the case agreed. My mother got the .38 revolver and my dad got the car and half the finances. My dad called me a faggot as he left the courtroom and my mother grabbed me by the arm; she was growing older, and puberty was beginning to take its first breaths into me, and I escaped and slugged my father a little bit below the centre of his chest but above the stomach. He was restrained by his lawyer and I was restrained by my mother who had gotten a hold of me once more.

When I found the paper it said “Diagnosis: MDD-infrequent psychosis; possible autism.”

My mother began giving me what I later found out were antidepressants right before sixth grade started, when she shifted me back into public schooling. I didn’t notice any effect—but my mother frequently doted on me after this. Well into 8th grade she commented on how respectful and well behaved I was as opposed to when I was younger. I felt indifferent to it, mostly. People would often call me names in the hall, not friends of Andrew as much as people who simply didn’t like me. I was indifferent to that as well; days with lunch foods I liked, good test grades, bad test grades, the time my grandfather died; it was all some sort of melodramatic monotonal emotional haze. A particularly sharp memory was the time I was asked on a date my freshman year.

I can’t remember her name—rather I’ve sort of erased it; I didn’t particularly care for what happened and I don’t want to remember it so over the few years since I’ve ruthlessly suppressed it. I do know that she had dyed red hair and a backpack with band patches all over it. She told me she thought I was cute and asked if I wanted to see a movie that Friday night. I asked my mother if I could go‍—not so much as I wanted to as much as she may have found something enjoyable about the fact I was asked out—and she agreed to take me. I was there at the time she requested and she messaged me to go to the specific theatre. I sat next to her as she requested; the actors on screen would do something funny and she would laugh and I wouldn’t. They’d kiss, and out of my peripheral I could see her looking at me in a strange manner. The film credits reeled and as I walked out she asked if I wanted to go on another date. I said I didn’t much care either way and she started crying. I asked why she was crying, I didn’t say no—and she said I was a shit-head. All of her friends gave me dirty looks the next day—my mother asked how it went and I told her it was fine.

Behind the movie theatre was this massive field; it ran out alongside power lines and a road, a few hundred yards out. It ran parallel to the road and the properties surrounding the mall for miles. I remember that my mother expecting me to get dinner with her afterwards gave me a rather liberal time for her to pick me up. I wandered the area behind the mall for an hour under the moonlight—I walked out a mile that night and found the gift of a vast field of flowers—I didn’t know their names. Red leaves with a yellow centre; they had no distinctive smell about them but the soft leaves gave me the information I needed nonetheless. I think that was one of the first times I could say something was beautiful; as I wandered back to the parking lot all I could think about was their smooth surface, the beautiful muted red under that pale light. I wrote my final English project that year on them, and it was not long before my mother began buying me books on Botany.

I visited it a total of five times in my sophomore year. My life at the time was this indifferent haze, as it had been since middle school, but there was this brief moment of clarity I experienced at the flowers. When my grandmother died and my mother gave me her ashes—according to her I was her favorite grandson (albeit her only grandson)—I buried it out there among the flowers. I remember with clarity that day, as I have so many others. As I clawed at the dirt a little bit outside—fall was coming and it was beginning to get a bit rigid with the cold—I heard crunching. A shadow darted behind a tree and I put the capsule quickly into the small hole I dug before I ran off.

I carried my mothers revolver every time I went to the field after that. She never put a lock on it, nor was it particularly well-hidden. She kept it in a shoebox in her closet; whenever she’d get blackout drunk it was relatively easy to sneak it away for my walks. Those times became all the more frequent when she lost her job—although she acquired a new one the health insurance benefits were nowhere near as good. Drunk one night, as she stared up into my eyes—without expression or emotion—she said I was her burden. I was a burden to my father; that was why he left. She called me a psycho before vomiting on her dress and I went back to my room. I remember she cried for a few days every time she looked at me afterward. Partway in the summer after my sophomore year she stopped giving me pills. I feel like my mother may have loved me—perhaps still does—but it is painful.

It was my junior year of high school when I killed my father.

Out there—among the flowers lay I. I had come to visit the ashes to a small degree, but the beauty of the flowers too was a powerful motivator. Over the winter I had gradually noticed my simple lack of feeling fading; my grandmother has been gone for some time now and I figured I ought to visit that spot. It was the end of fall; snow hadn’t yet made its appearance but the trees were bare, lifeless; the ground bore no color. I stood out there in my coat and looked over the flowers, dying, most colorless. I heard that crunching again—I couldn’t see that shadow as I had before, but I turned around.

There stood my father; I had not seen him since the court hearing but the time since then weathered him. What was once a healthy beard turned into a scraggly stubble, eyes loose and darting, with purple bags almost printed onto his skin. He recognized me before I recognized him.

The flowers were poppies; my mother’s botany books told me that much. They had a usage for opium. I think that was why he was out here. I couldn’t be certain. He had somehow gained weight, lost it, grown haggard yet fat, pale yet all too sun-burnt. His very form seemed to radiate a deep-rooted sickness. I grabbed the pistol out of my pocket and shot him in the throat; there were no words exchanged between the two of us. He was knocked flat on his back, gasping for a brief moment. I stood over him.

The blood from his throat formed a red line across the length of it, and poured onto the poppies. He kept staring at me. Gasping. Not a word came from his lips. I crouched down next to him like he did to me as I stared at that bird, and wondered if he even remembered me.

Those uncaring, sneering eyes he once bore at me I could see reflected in his pupils, as they began to slow. I hated him. I hated him so much. I pulled the hammer back one more time, and I prepared to burst open his skull. He couldn’t even tell who I was. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t know he was dying. I cocked the hammer back again, my first effort finding an empty chamber, and levelled the bore at his skull. I couldn’t pull the trigger again I found—I’d splatter the poppies. I let him sit there. There was a good minute of his gasping before he quieted down, and eventually his twitching stopped. He didn’t move again, not like that bird did.

I called the cops and reported a druggie attacked me. They didn’t question the revolver. They asked if I knew I killed my father. I said I couldn’t recognize him. The prosecution for me didn’t have a client that day—his body was at a morgue. My mother pleaded that I perceived him as a threat, that I was easily scared, there was something wrong with me. The jury pleaded not guilty of murder. I was put in counselling for the next two years.

I don’t go to the poppy field anymore—my indifference has finally returned to me.

Suburbpunk is living in a political and cultural dead-end

Suburbpunk is owning nothing and pretending like you own

and accepting it.

everything. Suburbpunk is hell. Suburbpunk is purgatory.

Suburbpunk is watching your neighbor kill his neighbor

Suburbpunk is watching your rent rise and being a stiff

with a fucking 9 iron.

wind away from eviction.

Suburbpunk is the opposite of Burgerpunk in architecture.

Suburbpunk is the 2008 financial crash. Suburbpunk is

There is no gas station to take your truck to, or greasy

downloading the Anarchist Cookbook at 13 because you want

burger place that you stop by. There is no liminal passage

to blow up your neighbor's mailbox. Suburbpunk is

through infinite miles of wagie hell. Suburbpunk is the

watching your parents divorce when you're 9 like a pop-up

home of wagie hell, stagnant birthplace of maggots and

book. Suburbpunk is the protestant ideological peak.

flies, infinite miles of poorly constructed bland homes.

Suburbpunk is having overweight animals because you can't

Suburbpunk is alienation from your peers.

be damned to let them outside. Suburbpunk is 8 hours on a

Suburbpunk is killing your peers.

computer because you live in a neighborhood with nothing

Suburbpunk is 30 for a gram, paying it, and reporting

to do. Suburbpunk is a failed art degree. Suburbpunk is

who sold it to the cops.

dropping out at 16 to be a mechanic. Suburbpunk is

Suburbpunk is watching 2/3 of your friends join the army

marriage either too early or too late. Suburbpunk is the

and die in some foreign war while you rot at home.

schizophrenic nightmare of a dead middle class.

Suburbpunk is killing yourself at 23.