Love Your Neighbor - Ode to Joy (Tom Cruise)

Title: “One Comment Away”

Joe Jukic sat at the kitchen table, tracing the grain of the Formica with shaking fingers. A half-empty cup of coffee steamed before him, cold now, while his mother loaded the dishwasher in silence.

He cleared his throat. “Mom, you remember in ’85, when we lived on Fleming Street? Tom Cruise was our neighbor.”

She paused, her back still to him. “Honey, we talked about this. This is a delusion”

Joe’s heart thudded. “No—that’s not right. He lived two doors away. I climbed trees with him”

His mother turned slowly, concern creasing her forehead. “Joe, these stories worry us. You’ve been on those medications for a reason.”

Every phone call ended the same. Friends would say, “Little Joe’s imagination runs wild. Tell him to rest.” His cousin laughed when he mentioned the old days: “You mix up movies and memories, man.”

But Joe remembered the bike rides, Cruise’s laugh drifting through the night air, the way the setting sun glinted off his neighbor’s hair. Most of all, he remembered Tom leaning over the fence, ruffling Joe’s hair and saying, “Keep dreaming, kid.”

Dreams. That’s what they called those moments now. Illusions.

If Tom Cruise really cared, Joe thought, he’d say one word. One Facebook comment to his mom—“I remember Joe”—and the whole world would shift. His frantic heartbeats would slow. Doctors would nod and say, “No need for those pills anymore.”

He imagined the post:

Tom Cruise: “Joe was my favorite little neighbor.”

Mom would show him that notification. She’d fold him in her arms, whisper, “You were right all along.” He’d breathe without panic.

Instead, the notifications never came. His mother’s gentle tears when he pressed her were the only proof he had—proof that he was losing himself faster than he could hold on.

Joe lifted his cup and let the bitter dregs spill across the table. He swallowed hard, the weight of silence pressing down.

“I guess I’m doomed,” he whispered to the empty kitchen, “doomed to vanish beneath their doubt… for telling the truth.”

Outside, the summer dusk deepened. Somewhere beyond the fence, he could almost swear he heard the laughter of a young Tom Cruise, urging him on. But when he called out, only the radio’s distant hum answered.

And so Joe sat, one comment away from hope—while the world told him hope didn’t exist.