Scout E.S. in the Shadows

Posts

Scout on Learning/The Sun

I was looking for the sun. It was hot out, but I couldn't tell why. Yes, it was bright, but the sun was nowhere to be found. I looked in trees, in birds, and finally, I looked into you. You shone brighter than any other living creature and any crystal. You glittered brighter than gold. I was happy, I knew I was, at least for a little bit. Now, though, I can’t seem to ignore the darkness that creeps in at noon. The cold that seems to disprove your efficiency and the unreliability that refutes your existence. How can the sun disappear when I need its presence the most? How can the sun turn cold? Tonight, I waited for you to leave so that I could ask the moon. Only, it was gone too because it depended on you. And my orbit shifted, and my planets got lost, but you still brightened up the next morning. This time, though, I doubted depending on you. I wondered why you had hidden from me when I needed you. I wondered why you provided heat and light without giving guidance. I do...

Scout on Choices/ Art

I used to see art in loneliness. How intelligent must a person be to have the power to stand on their own? I'm not sure if I was wrong or if I have a skewed perspective now that I am lonely. I’ve realized that it’s less of a choice and more of a punishment. My soul is dying to leap out, to escape whatever trap I’ve set. I keep it in, with everything else, and I'm small again. I’m crying on bathroom floors in grade school, my tears flooding the ground, and I blame it on the sinks. Pouring, and pouring, and pouring, but I still deny that something is wrong. How can it be when I still work, study, and eat? How can it be when no one can tell? And when I’m crouched down, I become a silhouette, and it’s like nothing ever existed at all. If so, why does anything matter? Everything is black and white, and I flash between both because I can't make up my mind about anything. I can’t decide if I hate my family for not being what I needed or if I love them for trying. I can’t te...

Scout on Maturity/Broken Glass

On the other side of the glass, I see the perfect version of myself. She walks with a skip in her step, and nothing about herself keeps her up at night or down in the morning. Everyone she knows loves her, and she finds a way to love them back. She has everything, she is everything, and her confidence is unwavering. The days behind the glass are long because they’re spent clawing at myself until I bleed. Why can’t you feel like them, love them like them, be loved like them? I hate when my reflection is too clear, when those eyes look as if they’ve rejected the idea of happiness. The glass breaks. At the shift of my image, I get angry with myself. You, in all your light and life and experience, sit here digging holes through yourself because you don’t fit a perfect mold? You sit here hating the color of your skin, your eyes, your hair, your body, your face, when you have everything to be grateful for? The wall shatters onto me, destroying the person that I ruthlessly despised, a...

Scout on Knowing/Tamo

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 ...

Scout on Standards/Thursday

I don’t need their theme to play in the background. I don’t need to hear their whispers to know they speak about me. I don’t need to hear their footsteps to know 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 out 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 eardrums could come loose and my feet could plant roots immune to my temptations. The smooth solo drifted through the hardly open window, and I forgot what I did and didn’t need. I ...

Scout on the Journey/ End Scene

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 ...