Scout E.S. in the Shadows

  Tamo had hair that stuck up like it was animated, and probably the biggest eyes that I had ever seen. He used to cry almost every day, and just as often, I would get frustrated. Shouldn’t a six-year-old be past this stage? I wanted him to apply himself, to use the intelligence he clearly had. I taught him and the other seven or eight kids alone for almost a month, and eventually, the crying stopped. I told myself that it was I who had gotten him here, and my efforts had a true effect on him. There I was, feeling so proud about how good he was doing, when he went and started crying again. It hurt me when the waterworks came, and he wouldn’t explain why, just stare at me for periods as if he had something to say. I would ask what’s wrong, and he would shake his head, and I couldn’t do anything to get him back to his seat. Today was different, though; he hardly had any energy to cry. He lay on the floor, watching me again, but something had changed. No matter what teacher or parent ...

  I don’t need their theme to play in the background. I don’t need to hear their whispers to know that they speak about me. I don’t need to hear their footsteps to know that they run from me. I don’t need anything. I can hear the tapping of the clock just fine, the drums just fine, the stomping just fine, the waves just fine. I don’t want to be able to read their lips or know the length of their stride. The drums are loud enough to drown the sound of my ignorance. They asked me what I thought about love, and I told them I didn’t want it. Because the ones who told me they loved me whispered and ran and sang in the background of my misery. I heard their sultry piano on a long Wednesday afternoon. They drowned the clock moving backward and the drums blasting a Phil Collins song. I shook my head, hoping that my earbuds could come loose and the hair from my scalp could erase the sharp notes. The smooth solo drifted through the hardly open window, and I forgot what I did and didn’t need....

  I never noticed how the paint behind the toilet had bubbled up into pimples. I had lived in the same house for almost six years, and it still went over my head. The only thing I can remember is the number of steps at each stairwell and the color of the walls. On my drive home from the grocery store, I had never looked to my left and seen the house under construction or the painstakingly modern mansion. Perhaps I cared more about my time and reaching a certain point than the journey to get there. It often feels like life is much more serious than it is. We take everything that occurs into our hearts and believe we have this ultimate power to decide our future. All it takes is a certain glare of light to realize that our livelihood is a play in which we have no control over the setting. The melancholy you believe in keeping at bay is switched in before your eyes, and no matter where you have run, it will slip in when the curtains are down. The failure you think you can resist by ...

  The mud was the first sign. It was freezing outside, and I couldn’t find my gloves, so I tried to push the ice away from my car with my bare hands. They were numb, but it felt good. I was told my car would have trouble because of the ice, but it was the mud that kept swallowing it back into the ditch. I think that sums up maturing pretty well because what people tell you will be a problem almost never is. The ‘virtues’ of life come in as Trojan horses, and I naively let them in with an open heart and a blank mind. My mind was blank then, too, when I was pressing the gas as hard as I could, and instead of moving, I was treated with the fine smell of gas and burnt rubber. They told me to get rid of the mud so I could get out, but I couldn’t get rid of the mud unless the car got out. I was met with the same paradox that my therapist had presented me with: to become happy, you must practice the things you love, but I could only practice the things I loved once I was happy. Eventual...

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...