The ring

It's hard remembering when I was a kid, though I sure remember the fights.

I remember my first fight in the lunchroom, reasons didn't matter, that was when I got my cutie mark. I kept fighting from there, every day, to one day get out of the slums. I'm pretty sure our lives are predetermined, something like that. Looking back in my life, I think that when I started fighting was when I really started to understand. I was a lot like my father, more than I'd hope to admit.

What I remember about him most was when I'd come home from school. He was laying on the couch, a bottle of beer spilled across the carpet, five more empty or almost gone strewn across the stand that he had placed the remote on, or at least tried. His cutie mark was a boxing glove as well. Almost fitting, almost. He tried his hardest not to fight other ponies but instead fight that mark. He worked at a fish packing plant, he simply operated a machine that put sardines in their neat lines. Looking back at it now, he was a lot like one of those sardines. He was trapped in his own little container, neatly packed in line with others like him. Or at least supposed to be like him.

I walked gently past him, sure not to awake him. He had work the next day, and it was getting late. I remember when I'd awake, he'd yell at another sardine packed in the same box. That sardine would be my stepmother. She wasn't cruel, not really, more apathetic. She didn't understand his drinking habit. She wasn't memorable, I don't even remember what she looked like. I remember my old stallion though.

He was a very very tall pony, they called him the Clydesdale of the bunch. Whatever that was supposed to mean. It didn't get passed down to me though. His mane was a rugged dark blue, almost navy, with spots of fur missing and leaving dark pink wells in their place. One was under his right eye, he'd take lots of hits there and surely it didn't heal right. His face was slightly lopsided in the direction as well, as if he was a slight curve. That look imposed itself everywhere else in his body. I suppose you have to fight when you look like that.

Like I said though, I don't remember much.

What I remember was when my stepmom walked through the door for the last time I saw her. I think I was 15 when that happened.

"You're not my son anymore boy. Get out."

"What?"

"You fucking heard me kid, get out of my house."

"You don't pay the rent you can't kick me out!"

"I do now kid, Dad's gone for good now get out of my house."

I almost didn't believe her, so I figured if I waited outside the door, he might come home and see. It was cold outside, and I had no jacket, but he'd be home soon.

Ten minutes grew to ten hours, ten hours grew to 24 hours. My stepmom had come out to go to work.

"You been here all day kid?"

"Can I go inside please?"

"Fuck off kid."

She turned her back and kept walking. I followed her out the door. That was when I'd heard what'd happened. There were newspapers outside of the apartment complex, they all had the same headline. There'd been an accident at the fish packing plant, and three people died. Someone forgot to turn off a machine, and when someone bumped into a group of people they all fell in. They were grounded into a paste. People were to return all products they'd gotten from the plant until an investigation was complete.

There were pictures, and in one I saw that same lopsided face, the patch of skin missing from under his eye. It was a picture from his ID. I stood up, put that paper in my pocket and went back to the apartment. The door was locked, so I kicked the door in and took two things. A small folding knife my father owned, his watch, and my coat.

I still won't go back to the Bronx today.