Scout E.S. in the Shadows

So, let’s dance. Tonight, and forever, alone like the north star far in the future. You’ll follow it one day like you promised, but tonight, it isn’t that night. You will sit and stare at it tonight, hoping you are on the way to something. It’s fun to imagine an idealist reality where the theory of what is right is, and when wrong is clear enough for a child to recognize. The truth is that most adults can’t distinguish between wrong and right, and all people are a contradicting pile of opinions and actions.  Sometimes, you let people define every part of yourself, and sometimes, you look back and realize that they also have no idea who they are. You can look into their eyes from across a room and feel like they’re the most powerful and all-knowing beings, but those gazes are far shallower than they seem. It’s apparent when they speak, but from a distance, their eyes will be on an undeserving pedestal with their soul. I made a list to make sure that no one’s opinion would sit above ...

The mind chooses the worst times to be vacant. On the day I left, not a single thought came to my mind. I looked, I ate, I walked, but I can hardly remember thinking anything at all. It was never like that before, when me and my brother ran through mazes alone, finding each other and nothing else for years on end. I don’t think I thought anything then either, but I wish I did so that I could remember those times. The places and people that became so far away now engulf my mind when they have become so out of reach. I can still feel those memories, in a distant corner of my heart that gets warm when anything vaguely familiar is nearby. Sometimes in my dreams, I run through the mazes looking for the old him, for the old me, for something that feels right. Now I feel mature and intelligent, but I felt those things then too, even if I wasn’t. I feel wrong and right, but I simply want to feel that time. When I lingered at boards with art, writing, festivals, and any semblance of life that...

Smooth slopes to travel down For the dripping tears rarely released My blank face in its reflection Dumbfounded by her reaction To my question She turns around To hide what you can see in her eyes The image of her sons, brothers, fathers, and uncles Wrapped in white cloth By the thousands In her choked cries I hear their voices before they become a memory   Smooth slopes to travel down For the people who ignore her tears For the people who ignore the men wrapped by the thousands In her voice, I think back, they weren’t the grunts of men They were laughs of children Cries of newborn babies Wrap yourself in warm white clothes Don’t forget that your position Is a privilege   Smooth slopes to travel down For my tears when I’m alone Not created by the thousands of wrapped bodies But by the turning of their cheeks At the sight of a people’s disappearance   Smooth slopes to travel down For people who think souls aren’t ...

And you know you’ve been set up. You know that you’ve been raised on the defense. You know you had no chance from the start. But you pretend that you are focused. You pretend that their calls don’t tempt you. You pretend you don’t sit staring at their pictures regretting your decisions. So, you walk with your head high. You block them out before they can have the courage to enter your heart. You don’t give them access to who you are. Break, on the dawn. Mend, at sunset. Dissolve, at dusk. Watch the pieces run down the drain as you wash them away.  Watch your reflection disappear in muddy puddles. Watch the sun rise again knowing nothing will change. Dissolving into your dreams, ask yourself how they let themselves into your home. How your mind became weak, how you wondered what a lack of loneliness must feel like. How they are not what you want, but their silhouette is something you could get used to. How the idea of them is intriguing, intoxicating, incomparable. Twist them into t...

                The sweet smell of chrysanthemums and lilies drew stale as they sat alone in dark rooms. You could hear the light tapping of the petals as they hit the table below them, alone like the person who purchased them for half price on a gloomy Sunday afternoon. Their seeds plop below into the salty water that loses its sweetness as the sugar escapes into the air for survival. Despite the scents and sounds of the bouquets, I only know they sit in the other room when the air is bitter and silent. When I hear my mother’s footsteps pacing as she waits for her brother’s call, for an escape from the life she rushed to choose. When I hear my father’s clacking, forever ungrateful to the sacrifices of my mother, pouring whatever is left of himself in the work that gives nothing in return. And as one enters a room, the other exits and I sit watching the petals fall. They curl and wither with every second of silence, whis...

Focus. Carry yourself through the movements and the rhythms, the light and the dark, the sun and the moon shining on you as you stare into the sky every night and every day, not for answers but for distractions. Carry me away, you tell the stars. Carry me away because I can’t focus. Get used to the silence, to the droning of the wind like the sky, telling the world to remember you when you can’t remember the person you were just last week. Focus on the voices that enter the beats of the wind and stars as they sing to you. As they tell you to focus. Chase the pavements, chase the promises they tell you as you skin your knees. Someone was just around the corner, you tell yourself. Someone who could tell you to focus, someone who couldn’t sync themselves with the sun, the stars, and the wind. You remember them, but will you remember you? Your rhythms are defined by their shadow, incapable of finding their definition without the sounds of others. In this atmosphere, you pour yourself. You ...