Scout E.S. in the Shadows

   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 ...

      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...

Where does it go? For years I sit and wonder where it has traveled To what ends has it walked In what oceans has it swam What blood has it watched drip into streets With nothing but a tear In acknowledgement The potential That I was congratulated for Told I was superior Told I was meant For something greater But the definition of greatness Is chosen by them Without fail, it is and always will be Money… Their definition That decides what humanity is That decide who Deserves humanity That decides who is human Their definition That decides what intelligence is That decide who Can be intelligent That decides who is intelligent Their definition That decides what success is That decide where Success must be achieved That decides who is successful Their system That keeps you Sitting… Silent… Scared… But never Successful Their system That pushes you Slowly From your path To theirs Their system That gets yo...

  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  

  Candy wrappers slathered onto wooden tables and chip bags’ potent smells wafted through the air and around the stickiness of all the junk food you could ever imagine. No child knew it then, but those chemicals kept them high. Maybe it was on sugar, possibly on one of the countless chemicals under the nutritional information listings with names none of us could read. Either way, it lifted those of us who couldn’t rely on anything else, who kept that smile plastered on our faces from eight to three. A quarter of an hour after that injection, that wrinkling of the wrappers, the crushing of the Smarties, we were free from everything.             We only needed it more the older we got, but eventually, it wasn’t strong enough; we needed something new, something stronger. A few sniffs couldn’t hurt, right? Just like those powdered Smarties, except much more expensive. I almost couldn’t feel myself after it, and all I could rememb...

  The office was the only place that sunlight didn’t reach. On fall afternoons, when I sit in cold corners on stiff chairs, I forget the warmth of the Sun. The familiar face seated across from me was more fixed than the contents of the room, never influenced by the inhabitants of its environment. I enjoyed it; it was comforting for something in my life to stay constant when nothing else ever could. Yet today, I wanted something different. I wanted something better . The feeling of speaking without concern or return had become a burden, not a privilege. Today I wanted to be understood rather than heard. The forms of these walls could no longer contain what my heart and mind released from the restraints of my fragile frame. Complaints, grievances, and anything else worth mentioning were spoken, yelled, and expressed. The face would listen, would care, but not feel. Feelings must be shown; feeling twists the face in every direction, fighting its own urges for self-expression. I call...