In life, we all have moments we wish we could rewind, choices we’d make differently if given a second chance. In “If Only,” Brian Wapole’s evocative journey, we’re transported to that fork in the road where the weight of unspoken words and missed opportunities looms heavy. The whispers overheard at his brother’s wake, “Maybe he’ll take it as the sign it is,” resonate with the universal longing for a second shot at life’s crossroads.
Brian Wapole – If Only
I had a life to live, if only…if only I met him walking back on the day she told me it was over. He begged me, please, to play with him. I chucked that ball into the lake. I had a life to live, if only…if only.
After the wake, he found the diary. The diary that held the secrets of our shared past. He turned to the day in question, the day that changed everything. There, written in his scrawl, were the words I never thought I would see, “I forgive you, my brother.”
Now and often then, in the fraying light of dusk, I can hear him sing. The cadence sharp, like it’s spun from glass. The rhythm restless, the meter too fast. I had a life to live, if only…if only.
I recall the time I found him curled on his bed in tears. I asked him what was eating him, and he told me, “Only a tiny monster.” Those words, so innocent and yet so profound, still echo in my mind. I had a life to live, if only…if only.
Brian Wapole – Biography
He was born, oh boy, during a rave on. Learned him to dance all night and day with Carol on Route 66. Took a job as Cathy’s clown. Bagged groceries with the new breed for Papa to buy a ticket to ride and catch the surf with Rhonda. But she left me for Nathan Jones, so he hung out with Mr. Pitiful by the dock of a bay, where he scored a hit off a tambourine man and floated eight miles high, from where he saw the next world war being staged out on Highway 61.
Under a risin’ bad moon, he hitchhiked with a fortunate son to the Morrison Hotel, only to be exiled on Main Street. He was discovered by Ziggy Stardust, who gave him fame and turned me into a young American. In the December of boyhood, he hooked up with a September gurl and we jammed underground through the streets of a strange town to record the dreams of children.
But London called, and she and Alison were recruited into Oliver’s army, when it was determined that their aim was true. He, on the other hand, met a super girl and drowned in summer’s cauldron, until he found his mission and resigned as a clown to become mayor of Simpleton.
Lately, he’s been getting my hell-on and recovering that teenage feeling by hanging out with Margaret and Pauline in the middle of a cyclone.
