Matthew+B

Let us slip into our dreams so that we may meet in another realm

Where different worlds yours and mine meld into one

One single dream crafted by masters of slumber who tinker with visions that we can see only with closed eyes

They do taint them with thoughts of pain a poisoned dream some say

The moon needs the night as I need you or else I lose my dream

Here part of my story __The Shot.__ This part was discussed a lot during the workshop so tell me what you think about his now that is has been edited.s

BACK ON THE FARM

My home is a farm in the town of Lexington. The Storms have owned it for years dating back to our Puritan ancestors who first settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts many years before. My father, Henry Storms, had worked on the farms just as his father had worked on them, and as I do now (or did, for I do not foresee myself farming until this war is over). He is tall with a muscular build, black hair and bright green eyes. I myself practically mirror him in appearance. In the town of Lexington lived Mary Higginson, who worked on a neighboring farm. She was only about five or six years younger than my father when they married, sporting reddish brown hair and freckles as well as green eyes similar to that of my father. My brother, William Storms, was born two years before I and looked more like my mother with his reddish brown hair and freckles. We loved each other in a way some brothers never do. Some brothers fight a lot and avoid talking to each other. William and I were never like that. Yet, this never bothered our parents or us as long as work was done without any sort of trouble. When William turned seventeen, he enlisted in the British army to serve in the war against the French and the Indians. At first, I was proud to know my brother was out fighting in the war; I eagerly awaited his return so that he could show me all that he had learned as a soldier. But as fall turned into winter, and winter turned to spring, and spring turned to summer, no word of my brother reached my home. As the days passed, I began to feel something of a grudge stir within me for the redcoats. “They took him from me!” I yelled at my father. “They took him to fight in their stupid war! What if he never comes back?” My father clapped me on the shoulder as if to both calm me and silence me. “He will return. William is strong and will be walking back to our farm come the end of the war.” But William never returned home at any point during the war or after it had ended. No news reached us specifying whether he was dead or alive. I often brooded but my mother was in shambles. “If he is alive, then he is likely doing fine for himself,” assured my father to my mother. “If he is dead, then God rest his soul and may he be at peace.” But my father’s assurances and comforting speeches fell on deaf ears, for my mother still wept many a night. I myself stayed up and stared at the empty bed opposite mine, hoping that I would fall asleep, then open my eyes to see William lying in it. Two years after the war ended, my mother succumbed to her grief. My father found her dead one morning and was heartbroken. He silently took her body out back and dug a grave with a wooden board and the head of it that simply read “Mary”. My father and I carried out life as normally as we could. Ten years later, in 1775, everything changed after I fired that one shot.

Matthew Brown's Memoir