Skip to main content

Scout on Choosing Right/Flowers in the Other Room

  

            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, whispering about the freedoms both of my parents have lost because of the other. They curse at them silently, embodying every regret and complaint that has never been expressed. How can they repair something that was never in one piece, but always two? How can they make my mother pretend that my father wants her? How can they make my father pretend that he cares?

            I ask myself, what are they but a way to convince me that they care for each other? Every bouquet becomes more invisible than the next, each time my mother pushes them farther away from her room, farther away from her heart. On lonely mornings I look at them sitting, being punished for being purchased by the wrong person, being entered into the wrong house. Sometimes I wish I was a bouquet, being bought by a different person so I can finally see what love is. When I muster the courage to look past their shortcomings, I ask them about who I should choose. It hurts even more that they know what they want; I stare into their eyes as they light up describing the person they wanted but never had. The person they did not wait to find because they hurried to check off the grocery list of life. They always slip an insult or backhanded comment, and the monster in my heart is unleashed as I remember my contempt towards them, as I realize that they may be good parents, but I may never know if they are good people.

            A few days pass, and I trim the flowers and replace the salty water with its sweeter counterpart. My mother will ask about them occasionally but won’t pay them a glance. She is too busy, she always says, to change their water herself. I can take care of them, I say, like I can take care of myself. Run away, I tell her, knowing she must as a person but wishing she wouldn’t as her daughter. On bright mornings, the flowers lift their heads to the sun and keep their petals attached, as if to trick me into thinking they will last. It hurts even more the next day when they die completely, and I am left to clean up the remnants. But what hurts the most is when I realize that I am the only one who noticed.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
1 comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

Scout on You/ Focus

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 ...
Post a Comment
Read more