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He had first read Martin’s poetry during his paranoid streak.
When he was rummaging through desks and looking for answers that weren’t there, convinced that someone was out to get him; though he was looking for the wrong someone.
He had stumbled upon it while digging through Martin’s drawers and eventually finding an unmarked journal, which he remembered swearing up and down in his head would have what he was looking for– these supposed “secrets” about Martin– and to an extent he was right. He had found Martin’s secrets, but it had come in the form of written prose. And despite his appearance being adjacent to that of a skittish English teacher, he could attest that he was quite terrible when it came to poetry.
He remembered in grade school, when asked to write essays on the meaning of Keats or Shakespeare, he would stare at the paper for hours trying to pick apart the words for what little symbolism he could decipher. It was all flowery mush, meant to sit nicely on the tongue and sound proper out loud, but when translated? It all became one pretentious amalgam. So instead he took comfort in what was solid; facts, science, non-fiction. Things that were tangible and easily confirmed.
Thus, he took to avoiding poetry whenever possible and found his life all the better for it, really. Poetry wasn’t something that was ever going to be useful for him, though he was practically beat over the head with the idea that poetry was an artform that had truly transformed society. He argued: if poetry had truly transformed society, then why wasn’t a poet paid as much as a scientist? No one ever had an answer. So it was filed away as just another thing that school teachers had tried to tell him would be important so he would stop asking questions.
He poured over the pages upon pages of writing, squinting as if that would somehow make the meaning appear like a neon sign, telling him everything he needed to know so he could stop reading this drivel. He barely even took the time to process the words he was reading or even recognize that he may as well have pried open the door to someone’s soul. Instead, all he thought to himself as he tossed the book back into the drawer before getting caught was, “mediocre”.
He could hardly get Martin to look him in the eye now most days, if he saw him at all. Each time, it left part of him aching for something that he hadn’t even had a chance to recognize was gone. A friend? An ally?... Just someone to talk to that didn’t hate him? Whatever it was, it harassed him constantly, tricking him into believing in spirits that weren’t there—catching glimpses of Martin down the hall, his voice in another room, his paperwork on an open desk—and hunting the ghost of a living man.
When he burst into the adjoining office, It had been–with the exception of Martin’s own desk and paperwork–a hollow shell of what it once was, even the walls now stripped bare. There was a time when all three of them had shared this room; Tim, Sasha (what little he remembered of her), Martin. He would often hear them through the paper thin walls and wonder what was so important that they felt the need to chat amongst themselves like school girls swapping secrets. The days were impossibly quiet now, weighed down with an unbearable silence of what was. What should’ve been.
“... we could leave here, you and me. Escape.”
“Jon.” He replied, avoiding his gaze with a simple shake of the head. “ Don’t do this.”
He left the room and closed the door behind him. Ignoring the way that final click felt more like the snapping of a thread.
Jon didn’t understand poetry. But he tried to decipher what little he could find of Martin’s like a grand mystery. Maybe this would be the key, maybe this would make him understand what was wrong with him. He needed something tangible, something he could grasp as everything else seemed to just slip between his fingers like grains of sand. During his more desperate moments, he would even find himself rewinding the tapes, hoping to catch the smoking gun. Something that would explain what had caused everything to unravel the way it had.
What he could’ve done differently. (And God, what he wouldn’t give to do it differently. If only for Martin).
But instead, all he found was the lie he was telling himself. What mystery was this solving if only the one of why he needed to hear his voice so badly? The mystery of the way his chest ached with a hollowness left behind by a love lost.
He chuckled cruelly to himself. Here he was, thinking like a poet. And all it took was being broken down enough to understand the words that connected to feelings he swallowed down like a dry pill. If he was a poet, then he certainly wouldn’t count himself amongst the good ones.
He rewound the tape just to hear the way he spoke to him again.
They stood in front of a carousel of human horrors now, Jon tucking away a tape recorder back into his bag as he spoke.
I mean, I just thought of– I sort of thought it was pointless. Just– write some prose, and stop– wasting everyone’s time.
Hm. What changed?
He paused, his eyes softening as he thought of the only poet he’d ever cared to listen to more than once.
Jon still didn’t understand poetry. He found most of it flowery and overdramatic, painfully so. But he was more than willing to make an exception for the spoken poet whose words he kept to himself like a prayer. He shook his head, breaking his train of thought.
I don’t know, I just– mellowed on it, I suppose.