Scout on Mothers/ The Winds

She gives her breath to make life in the air

Trees envy the power only they sought to hold

I watch as she scorches and yells

And through her eyes, I can almost see a drought

What she has squeezed from her own toil

Is resting unused in my soul

What have I given her back, she questions

Yet I know I didn’t ask for this responsibility

She suffers without the pain of approval

I birth to follow in the amenities of pain

I gift my new presents what I was once given

They follow in our cycle of remorse

Comments

Scout on Cycles/Without Fail

And so I return, back to the black and white letters and the soft clacking of the keyboard. I return after the rejection of my fragility, knowing now that the escape is temporary. How can I find meaning in this obscure trouble? How can I continue to be angry at the fleeting wind? When all is said in done, I sit in crowded rooms alone and listen to phones ring without an answer. I look around only to count how many people have run from me, mistreated me, and spit on my name. Shallow walls swallow me in whenever I walk, cloudy air consumes my sentences whenever I speak. That pit in my stomach doesn’t leave because it is my soul; broken, abused, self-pitying, and pathetic, but still my soul. It and I long for the day that it will be free to find its purpose. Today, I watched the breeze shuffle through the leaves, and I remembered the days when I would stare up at it and wonder if it was all the same. Every road had trees almost exactly alike, which I learned from...

Scout on Trying/Mud

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...

Scout on Siblings/ Mazes in the Chinese Church

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...

Scout E.S. in the Shadows

Search This Blog