A Smaller Collection of Recent Works (Down to the Wire + Street Signs + Home-Run)

(Narrated Version of the Post)

     

 

Hey everyone! Sorry it has been quite awhile. School has started up and I'm trying to remind myself as often as possible that the only person "forcing" me to post here is me, and that I need to make sure I don't burn myself out. I'm sure I will generate plenty of creative ideas over the course of this semester, and write some banger articles for you come summer, but for now, I'm going to primarily showcase some of my finished works to tide you over till then. I want to aim for posting every other week, but I'll keep you all updated on how that goes. Thank you for your understanding, and I hope you enjoy these works!

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Another ding at the register. Another satisfied customer. You have this deeply personal habit of staring up and down at all the female passersby; you don’t discriminate. You and your friends like to casually banter that “you’re no better than a man” when you find someone abstractly beautiful. Abstractly enough, jokes don’t absolve you of the consequences.

Abstractly enough, when you see someone you consider unattractive, you and your friends snicker and sneer behind their backs, attacking and assaulting the bodies that were crafted with refined iron and the toughest steel. The thought of your accountability and your place in the increased rates of passing women never hits your psyche. Abstractly enough, you use your lack of social and political awareness as an excuse. You are not absolved of the consequences.

You often think about how much you’d love to get to know this woman more. You last caught her standing innocently by herself, waiting for the light to change so she could cross the road. You thought to yourself, she was alone. You focused on how no one was around to see what you do best, watch and scrutinize. You never really think about how the things you are doing under this guise of ignorance can harm you or the women on the receiving end. You never stop, considering their position in all of this, the receivers of your indirect dismemberment and objectification. Abstractly enough, it's hard to see you ever getting closer to someone whose history you’ll seemingly never understand. You’re still not absolved of the consequences here.

“Another woman was found dead today, as another wave of sexism sweeps over—” You always turn off the TV before it can explain to you where your ideologies falter. You hate to be wrong, so you must always be right. A staunch advocate of “grow thicker skin” settles on your palate and swallows wrong; you choke. You’d rather do anything than realize that you’re the problem here. You have a sneaking suspicion that it’s a hoax made up to try and protect women. Again, you have to be on the winning side of every argument. There is no way you can be wrong…right? At this rate, you’ll never be absolved of the consequences.

You manage to work up the courage to meet that woman waiting at the crosswalk. You’re standing face to face with her, and now you notice the small splotches on her face, the imperfection you were always afraid to acknowledge. That strong iron skin cracks, and sometimes innocence turns to anger; you’ve discovered another human. This experience is strange to you; your body is conflicted. She isn’t perfect, and she never will be, but she is a woman, nonetheless, entertaining the company of you who has possessed an image of her body without her consent and without her knowing. What will you do? You will act as though you are one of the “good guys” and attempt to absolve yourself of all. Abstractly enough, nothing has changed, and you’re still you.

You spend more time with her, and she shares some of her beliefs with you. Still, you refuse to acknowledge the lethality of your actions. This was not the future you predicted. Is it possible that you cannot keep up with the horrors you perpetuate? Is it possible this is all a product of willful ignorance? Do you think she will still love you if she finds out you are part of the problem? Do you think she will still love you if she finds out you’ve lied to her? Why can you deceive her when she only aims to inform you? There is always going to be a disconnect between you two. You’re never going to understand her perspective fully.

You go to see her after work, but she never clocked in for the day. You’ve already got a bad feeling about this. You pop open your phone and check the news, hoping you don’t see that same news title you’ve gotten so used to seeing, “Sexism Kills (x) Women in Destructive Wave.” You’ve stopped hanging out with those friends of yours; their views have fallen out of alignment with your own. You’ve changed. Now you question if the way you stare at other women is appropriate social conduct. You still have moments when you realize no one is watching, and you take a good look. You’re not disgusted. You’re changing. Your actions are excusable…right? You go to her house, and the door is locked. You step around back just as the sun starts to hit the hill. Even she wants nothing to do with you.

Here, you realize the consequences of your actions. You may have thought anything you realized before now was sufficient to change the course of history. The surprising thing is that you’re not the only one capable of inflicting this damage. Just like before, standing in the open, “grow thicker skin” settles on your palate, and this time, when you choke, you throw up. The woman by the crosswalk won’t be clocking in anymore. No precious innocence waiting to be violated at the stoplight. No more introduction to a philosophy you can’t understand. That deeply personal habit becomes your hands, and you claw and scream at the dirt, pulling up the grass, dying in the winter chill. Your nails stain and the yellow grass takes your abuse and understands.

You’re changing, you think to yourself. You believe your change was sufficient to alter the course of history. How rude of an awakening is this for you? Was it not enough to hear the other pleas for help through the TV you shut off every morning? Was it not enough to cackle and laugh where women passersby can’t hear? Was it not enough to change? Was this not what you thought the outcome would be? Abstractly enough, only you were not aware that this would happen.

You spend the next day violently grieving at work as if from somewhere else; she can hear what she needed to hear sooner. Another ding. Another satisfied customer. A woman walks in and out. You think to yourself for a moment. You consider looking up. You’ve changed. She’s gone.

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The kid with the smiley face on his hand is acting differently today.

His smile has now turned into a frown and is cracking apart.

The window wiper is streaking today, a rare occurrence.

The new mother is new to her job and newly new to being late, something rather old-fashioned.

For me, I am not changing. I am not changing in any way.

I rise the same way; I travel the same way.

I depend on and rely on others the same way.

I exist as the extension of those who have come before me in the same way I always have.

But for some reason, the signs of my existence are starting to change.

I have begun observing that small child and his cracked smile.

I have begun wondering why he is no longer smiling.

Family trouble? Parents never home? Rough day at school?

Why would it be any of my business?

That window wiper is wearing different pants today, and his boots clash with the bruises deeply imprinted upon his hands.

Domestic dispute? Working hard at the gym? Going through something?

Why would it be any of my business?

Lately, however, I have begun looking at myself in obscure ways.

As I pass in and out of my days, I see the smaller things disguised among the branches.

There is subtle disgust on the faces of those who have not gotten what they desired.

There is considerable angst lingering on the foul breath of those who suffer insecurities.

There are languished individuals left rotting in the raging fires that are the conditions of their minds.

But how do I perceive myself among the crowd walking to the same place as me?

Slowly marching on to an end we know is coming and willfully ignore.

Well, to answer the previously posed question, I do not know.

I have begun observing myself in the gentle veins on the leaves.

How—to live—they will continue to transport water, storing and preserving it in the event of drought or some form of limitation due to surface damage.

I see myself among the withering weeds between the sidewalks.

Nothing to thrive for and serving no purpose other than to grow towards their guidance: the sun.

I perceive myself in the steadily cracking skin possessed by those workers who get no rest.

Splitting and bleeding but maintaining little by little—focused solely on the will to remain in place.

However, I often find myself most drawn to that place in the woods right off the road.

There is a clearing in the woods, and a crooked-neck mailbox beckons with a dull luster, tempting my curiosity.

I think I am stuck somewhere between the clearing and her crooked neck mailbox.

I find myself somewhere between broken and in the process of opening up in new ways.

As I sprawl among the grass and her tiny hands, they buckle and fold under my weight.

I find myself inside the patches of yellow, dying grass, knowing I will return to my glory in another season of life and do so gracefully.

But in that field, an image presents itself in the darkness behind my eyelids.

I am standing on the edge of a road, with a figure wandering slowly away.

I never quite see them in my arms, but a warmth is always left behind, lingering long on my skin.

The hair on my flesh retains the impression of the memory, holding onto something it cannot describe.

I let them go and walk my way, hoping they look back at me with pity.

On my path, I catch the familiarity of that clearing in the woods and her precious crooked-neck mailbox.

I stop and wonder if I made a wrong turn somewhere along the way and ended up back where it all always began.

I stop and notice the small veins reflecting the subtle moonlight, telling me there is no more running from it all.

I notice a small crack in the field just ahead. She’s splitting herself, organizing her grass, and sorting her green-to-yellow grass ratio—she’s somewhere in between and cannot decide.

I notice the houses glowing softly, loving those who inhabit them, knowing nothing else can be done.

I notice the moon and how she never stops shining, even when she is covered by a quilt woven with fibres of frost and agony.

I then stop and sit in a moment of self-reflection, deeply swallowed up by something between describable and indescribable.

Perhaps I am thinking about things a little too simply.

Perhaps I am coming to accept the possibility that I am changing.

Perhaps I am the small veins reflecting the pale glow of the moon.

Perhaps I am the clearing in her woods, focused on the distractions rather than the things that matter most.

Perhaps I am more enthralled by the novelty of destination and finding that I have forgotten to mourn the many journeys I have endured on my path to incompletion.

Perhaps I am looking at the roads carved out all around me and their rigid wear and tear, telling the story of countless journeys carried no doubt safely to their destinations.

Perhaps I am nature herself—experiencing countless separations and indecision, resulting in the splitting of identity.

Perhaps I have finally realized that a piece of me wants a better future.

Or perhaps I am the moonlight herself, no longer running from it all and enduring for me.

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“Go on, Billy. Run on home.” The old neighbor screams out into the night at his son. I wonder if the pain got to be too much for him. I feel guilty. Billy was protecting me, though I wasn’t there—he died protecting his peers. I know it ain’t my fault. I didn’t send him to that school, and I ain’t even know him.

“Go on, Billy. Run on home. Grandpa is gon’ be right here when you finally make it back.” That kerthunk of baseball in the early 2000s will never rebuild itself as a good memory without you. It’s hard to picture you there now.

I’ll hear it through the walls too. I’m young, so my hearing and speaking go much further than my neighbor’s. His old age is doting on him, that I’m sure of. I’ll hear him wail and echo through his house. Surely, one would think Billy was home by now.

Maybe he’s reaching the end of this timeline. News spreads like wildfire ‘round here; hard not to be abreast of it. We’re all grieving, I like to think. That’s somethin’ my youth ain’t take from me yet. I can still feel it. “It” is the gravity of where we stand—the soil I walk on.

I walk on souls of the lost; they’re wanderin’ too. Followin’ wherever a guitar’s strum picks up a lil’ bit of wind and wails a lil’ too loud. Wherever we can find that lil’ piece of somethin’ more satisfyin’.

As I scratch my bristly and masculinely low-cut hair, sure as I’m layin’ here, Billy’s ghost comes-a struttin’ through the door. He’s talking to me, but I can’t hear him. I see his mouth is movin’, but it feels like he’s just a lil’ bit too late—or maybe it’s the other way around.

There’s something vulnerable wellin’ up inside-a me; something strong enough, violent enough, passionate enough to make a young man cry. I ain’t no stoic, but ain’t a crybaby neither. But Billy’s bein’ here is something I can’t explain.

Maybe I’ll tell Billy to go-on through that there door and walk on over to his Grandpappy—tell em’ that you’re home, and give him a big ol’ hug. Thank him for lettin’ you stay later for your baseball game; you were always such a good player, Billy.

When the wind decides to stop talkin’ through the strings, the lost wander—waiting for another chance to feel the grass beneath their feet again. We’re lucky—sittin’ here readin’ or playin’ a game. I bet you forgot you are a part of somethin’ bigger; it ain’t just you; I do it too.

I tell Billy, “Beat it”—and that his Grandpappy is still “playin’ the piano jus’ waitin’ for you to waltz on through that door.” I like to think that he listened; I can’t see him no more. Maybe Billy finally did run home.

Maybe I’m makin’ it all up. Nighttime dreamin’ while awake. Wonderin’ what it’d be like to see Billy playin’ baseball again down here in this summer heat. I think that…Billy’d want me to think about his master play.

How—right at the end of his games—he’d always do a silly lil’ dance and wave at his family. He claimed it was his good luck charm; who are we to judge? How he’d always make sure to hit that last homerun and see the match through, even if it wasn’t a winnin’ play.

If I see em’ again, you best believe I’m gon’ do his little dance for him. I’ll honor him, just like I’ll mourn him—if I ain’t too numb to it yet. I’ll strum my guitar and catch the wind, and I’ll listen quietly for the pitter-patterin’ of his ever so gentle footsteps runnin’ on home, quietly cheerin' to myself, “Go on, Billy. Hit your home run” as the wind huffs right out my strings.