Scout E.S. in the Shadows

  I wanted to write a story about you. That’s why I ran down to Chan’s Grocery so late at night; I needed to get one of those stupid drinks you love to try and trigger a memory. It was something you had said on one of the days we sat outside of the little shop, with its blinding lights hitting our backs in the dark street. I was always in the light when I was with you, inside and out. Anyway, that day we were laughing so hard that people thought we were drunk. You had spit out your drink so far that it practically hit a moving car, which made us laugh harder and stumble back into the store to buy more, much to the amusement of the teenage cashier. Well, I forgot what had made us laugh so hard, so I thought that sitting here and drinking that terrible sugary concoction might bring it back into my mind. The cashier is different, much older and more tired, so I hope I don’t have to hysterically repurchase anything. I’m not sure if time is messing with my head, but sitting here, the li...

  I wrote you a letter, but you never responded. I guess I could summarize it here, but you might not be able to get the original sentiment. It’s more of the fact that I can’t remember exactly how I felt when I wrote it, or what I felt that entire year, to be honest. I know who was there and, most importantly, who wasn’t, and that I was absent, at least mentally. Sometimes I look back and wonder what would have happened if I weren’t me, if I did things like all the people around me, who everyone says are more reasonable and level-headed. The truth is that I’m sorry about how I treated you. You never deserved to be ignored or taken for granted, but I can’t say that you didn’t set it up for yourself. Watching those people trample you and waiting so long to leave, it was as if you thought you couldn’t do better. Maybe you couldn’t, and maybe you still can’t, but there has to be more out there. If you weren’t so angry and rash all the time, then- no, I didn’t mean that, not completely....

  A man in a stiff black suit holding flowers and cheap chocolates walks into a well-lit dining room with untouched plate ware, chandeliers, and landscape paintings. A dull, empty vase and a cold rack of ribs sit on the table by a sad yet otherworldly beautiful woman. Her red lipstick is stained on a wine glass, with the evidence of an empty champagne by her side. Their eyes meet as he places the bouquet into the vase and the chocolates beside. He walks off down the long, dark hall, and the woman grabs the flowers. A thorn cuts her finger, and she calmly wipes the blood on the pristine white tablecloth. Tears drip down her unmoving face as she grabs the rack of ribs and walks off into the dark kitchen behind her. A single petal falls from one of the roses. The hallway in front of the dining room lights up as the television plays a sultry romantic comedy, drowning the woman’s hysterical crying. The sun rises, and the house is unchanged except for many fallen petals. The woman, in a ...

  Five days ago, he called. Said he was lost, that he ‘needed’ me. I’ve heard that one before, I told him, and shut the phone. I regretted it immediately, of course; I loved him, would never stop loving him, but I couldn’t do that to myself again. I couldn’t settle for carelessness when it was all I had known, when it was everything that had damaged me and everything I despised. There were sleepless nights were I had sat repeating to myself that I deserved better, I deserved someone who noticed when I was there and when I wasn’t, what I liked and what I hated, what I wanted and not just what I needed. It's Friday night, and I sit waiting in front of my phone for his call. Deep down, I don’t believe I can do better. What made me any more deserving of love than anyone else? I should take it in any shape, way, or form that it comes because it’s better than nothing. It’s better than sleeping alone. A small, younger part of me doesn’t truly think that. It’s the part of me that doesn’t...

  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...

  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...

  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...

  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 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 ...

  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 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. Like everyone else, they are blind to their flaws and the flaws of th...

The mind chooses the worst times to be vacant. Not a single thought came to my mind on the day I left. I looked, I ate, I walked, but I can hardly remember thinking anything at all. It was never like that before, when my brother and I 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. 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 I so deeply wanted. Now, I have access...

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 ...

  Experience teaches you that there is no such thing as a good or a bad person; there are only people who will hurt you and people who won’t. Labels and gossip often deceive us; we let the elementary judgments of others play into our logic. Their words are too imperceptive to gain value over analyzing their treatment of others and their treatment of you. When I walk on dark empty roads, I constantly look over my shoulder, wondering if there is someone following me. It is not because I know that someone is there, but it is because I know someone could be there. The same logic is applied to the nature of people. I am not cautious because I know they will hurt me; I am cautious because I know that they can. I suppose that is the logic that causes people to build walls and trenches around themselves. I gave up on understanding why people hurt others, and what they do to deserve such treatment. People are not mirrors, they are puddles; they do not copy treatment, but rather they warp it...

   I tell myself that it’s just one of those nights. When every letter on the page was a waste of space, when the paper was better off empty than when I decided to infect it with my useless thoughts. The tangents run on their own, taking up space but never solidifying into anything of value. Every step I take shakes the ground with the weight of my insignificance. How heavy it must be to be so light, so shallow, so soulless. I go on, I became so uninhabited that gravity itself cannot ground me on this Earth. I look up at the sky and I see myself, my thoughts, every good and bad deed I have ever done disappearing above me, looking for the soul they belong to. I scream at them, at the fruit of my existence, at my anxieties, but to my voice they are deaf. I stare into the eyes of my love, but to my body they are blind. I empty my cards to try to buy an ounce of importance, but to my contribution they are ignorant. I shove my achievements in their face, knowing none of them matt...

  It’s a bit dustier here A lot more orange Just like the Hollywood movies made it seem Although, there are fewer men with weapons Less evil than it looked Maybe they didn’t want us to know that there was love In the air Because when I look at this land I see rich people Rich in love And hope And humor And I realize that the problem wasn’t the soil but the people on it And I see the distance I have from understanding that Because I have been taught to be selfish And I have been taught that community is unreliable But here where the buildings crumble The Sun is brighter because these people have earned it When I return, I’m not sure what I have missed But I am sure it is not the same I am sure our minds are a bit tighter A bit less tolerable And I am sure that they have been mistaken Because the land isn’t gray Like it feels And the land isn’t evil on their screens As it feels to me But the soil isn’t the problem It is me; the ...