I Am Alone

Published
February 25, 2023

Sometimes when I fall asleep, I can relive my life. The life before. Everything feels so real: the conversations, the faces of my family smiling at me, and the gentle touch of my wife and son. When I wake up, the happiness never existed.

I am alone. I am hopeless.

I get up from my stained bed sheets each and every morning and head out into the yard, where my eyes are blinded. It is just as well perhaps. All there is, is barren wasteland.

And that fence.

The wall of chains and sharp barbed wire, of cliffs and deep moats. I touch the rust each and every day, hoping that it is the day I will be saved. Each disappoints.

Forgotten, alone, and regretful. The day the bombs came down from the sky like meteors was the day I lost my life.

About the piece

In 2014, my Senior English teacher gave us a sheet of paper with six photographs on it. Each image showed a hand doing a different action. We were tasked with writing about one of the photographs for about seven minutes, describing what might be going on. I wrote mine about the picture of a hand reaching out to a barbed wire fence with nothing in the surrounding.

CHASE CHARABA is an aspiring fantasy author, small business owner, landscape photographer, YouTuber, and content marketing specialist. He started writing fiction in elementary school. He's written for his high school and college newspapers and published more than 350 articles for small businesses with a total of more than 200,000 views.