The worker

He's studying at school for a job he knows he will never like for a family he does not know yet. His hopes are on a wife and some kids, and his goal-even now, before he has ever met them-is to keep them safe and make them happy. He's been working so hard, studying so greatly at subjects he knows he will never enjoy so that the family he one day will have-the family he knows will be more important to him than his own happiness-will be well fed with a roof over their heads. 

Sometimes you can catch him writing-when he doesn't think it will hurt anyone-one of those long novels he's so good at which always turn out so beautifully. And which he doesn't think enough of to send to a publisher, despite everyone who's ever read it telling him that he should. 

And sometimes you'll find him-when the fight with with homework is over-and when the words for his pages have failed him-still being the hero, if only on the Xbox. He's fighting for justice and saving the innocents, even when he has to get his own hands dirty to do it. The video games might not matter to his father, or even himself, but to his sister they show there is a battle inside of him between what he wants and what he knows he must do. 

And as explosions simulate on the screen, his sister knows the choice he has made-though she wishes he could have both. Sometimes still thinks he could-she knows he's making the best decision for that family he one day will have.