The Silver Bar

When he was
Seven years old,
He saw his father
Give his brother
A some sort of silver bar,
But he didn’t get one.
On the surface, it was
An insignificant incident,
But in the adolescent mind
Of that boy,
It became pivotal to his life.
It was interpreted
To mean that his father
Loved his brother
More than he did him.
From that he deduced
That life is unfair,
And this filled him
With a bitter rage
That haunted him
For most of his life.
An icy chill settled in
Between father and son,
Although his dad
Had no idea why.
Eventually communication
Between the two
Ceased entirely.
He hadn’t talk to his father
For over ten years
When he finally decided
To confront him
With the memory that
Had been tormenting him
All those years.
As best as his father
Could recall,
The silver bar
Must have been
The foil from
A stick of chewing gum,
And for that
He had lost a son.
There is practically
No limit to the damage
A single misinterpretation
Can play throughout
The course of a life.
The son, of course,
Could hardly get over
The stupidity of it all,
And what it had cost him.