I walked over the threshold and closed the door for the last time. Trees shook overhead as I took first one step, then another, pacing my way off the porch, into the yard, and around the house. I tiptoed around mud puddles and traversed the small hand-made bridge my father constructed for the rainy days when the earth around his paint-laden shop transformed into a moat. My eyes caught on the broken trampoline behind my house, but I turned away. My legs carried me up a clay-ridged slope and away from the clucking hens and the ghostly echo of a final bark. I planted a foot firmly near the top of the slope and grabbed an overhanging pine, hoisting myself up onto the driveway of a once-developed lot which now could serve quite well as a Christmas tree farm. Stepping between two overhanging trees, the well-travelled path of my childhood opened before me. Images of I and my father snapping off branches and sifting through pine needles filled my mind as I retraced the first steps we made into this tangle of pine trees and dead blackberry bushes. My feet crunched pine needles and leaves from years past into dust as I moved into the enclave we had made at the top of the ancient gravel driveway. My eyes caught on a tall maple with trunk torn by violent strokes: hewn, but not felled. Around the oak twined a sickly Mountain Laurel covered with the refreshing buds and blossoms of a spring long overdue. The smaller tree seemed to push away from the larger, leaning away despite the tendrils holding it in place. The base of the Laurel formed a semicircle reminiscent of a seat. Into that seat was carved, “J+B.” From that small opening in the trees, one could see the surrounding mountains jutting out between the tips of pine trees and startling the senses with their splendor. I stepped over the edge of the opening and skittered down the mountain like a billy goat, darting between trees and coming out behind a small cinder-block fort. An airsoft pistol rusted away within its battlements as Nature took back what was rightfully hers. My lungs ached as I threw myself up another slope with steps hewn carefully into the soil, the ring of my brother’s shovel scraping roots sounding out into the cool morning air. As I hoisted myself up the limbs that taught me to climb, I noticed another carving: “J+B.” It had always been coming. We all realized that. I hung inverted as I always had and peered through the trees at my mother singing as her fingers danced over the ivories, my sister pounding out a rhythm beside her. The words of a favorite song danced through my mind: “Now I can’t wait to go home…” My brain snapped back to the present. Back to concrete walls and sheetrock ceilings and the ever-present squeal of a siren in the background. Back to the amenities of city life and the tough adjustment of attending school in a new place. I flashed back once more to a rainy night, a night upon that abandoned lot. She stood before me and asked, “Please don’t go.” And then the sky cried around us as we cried against one another, my arms clasping her tightly to my chest as my heart rejoined hers. “I’ll always come home.”

The boy ran, slowly at first, but then faster and faster, feeling the exhaustion creep up within him and close his lungs. He pounded his bare feet into the dirt, sending clods of mud skittering between the ducks in the nearby lake. As his feet sunk into the loamy clay of the ground and became stuck, he started to worry. “What if I never become free?” he thought, not realizing that he stood, not in quicksand, but merely a knee-deep pit of mud. Crossable? Perhaps. Nobody really knew. Most people were smart enough to avoid the mud, or at least run fast enough to skim the surface. The boy made the rather clumsy mistake of running into it directly and continuing to slam his feet into the ground as he did on the more solidified parts of the lakeside shore. As his feet sunk into the mud, he began to panic. He shouted, “HELP! HELP ME! I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M DOING OUT HERE AND I REALLY NEED SOME GUIDANCE!” No voice answered, no gods cried out from above, nothing. He wasn’t swept up and out of the mud, rescued on a whim by some winged bear-dog. He continued to sink until the mud covered his waist, struggling to find something to grab onto. He noticed a nearby branch, but couldn’t reach it. He knew that the proper course of action for a person trapped in quicksand was to roll on top of the sandy soil to avoid penetrating the soft surface of the sand and sinking within its cold grasp. In this case, his feet refused to come free. They remained stuck in the mud as he worked them side to side, forward and backward, and attempted to extricate himself from the bloody mess he had been heaped into. But he couldn’t. Everything had gone wrong; he couldn’t run anymore because his feet were stuck in the mud and wouldn’t move, and he just had to wait until someone came along and decided to help him free himself. He sat there and thought, and waited, and thought, and eventually his feet settled upon the ground. He realized that the mud wasn’t really as deep as he had thought, and that he wouldn’t sink up to his neck so long as he kept his footing. He could do this thing and he knew it. He knew he possessed the capability to continue on. He just needed someone to help him get free of this mud. From behind, he felt a knocking on his shoulder. Twisting to one side, he looked over his nether regions and discovered a curly-haired girl standing there behind him. “Well, let’s get you out of there,” she said quietly, dragging over a fallen limb. The boy slowly dragged his legs out of the thick mud, clumps of it still sticking to his hair, his face, and his clothes. His pants were entirely brown with mud. “Thank you,” he told the girl, smiling gleefully at his newfound freedom. “Of course,” she replied. “Everybody gets stuck sometimes.” She began walking. The boy followed closely behind. “Wait,” he said, “Why did you help me?” “I knew you needed help. Should there be any other reason?” “Fair point.” The plodded on side by side. “Do you want to keep walking together?” the boy asked. “I can leave if you’d like.” “Please stay,” the girl replied. “I’ve been lonely for so long. It’s nice to have company, even if I have to help you once in a while.” “Then I can help you, just as you help me,” the boy said with a growing smile. “True,” the girl said, a hint of a smile showing under her stern expression.

Arise! Arise! Jump free of bed And its grotesque confines. Dance your way through The bellowing wind As it trembles leaves. Hear the birdsong Pierce the solitude of morn. And now a hush comes over Bears stir in their slumber The phoenix is reborn. The ashes choke The snake collapses The world is again made whole.

He dropped the soap. He picked it up again. Drop. Pick up. Drop. Pick up. His claws left gouges In her smooth white skin Every time He picked her up. Drop. Pick up. Water ran down his hair And hid the gouges. “I love you,” he proclaimed, unseeing, unknowing not understanding what his nails did to her soft, white skin. Not noticing her yearning To sluice away with her dregs of soap And escape into the drain. Her essence drifted away as the water ran Until one day he found Nothing left for his fingernails to clutch. She disappeared into the drain, And now, nothing remains.

Her heart hath kissed Mine weary wounds, And Time-won aches, Under blood moons. My raft drifts In the endless river, Unmoored from safety, Swept by its ripples. Cold, I cough Shivering through Night. As I approach The next daylight. Aurora never arrives, The chariot patters away. No sun shines, I remain in the fray. Hoary hills and wintergreen Pass by on that sage stream Which knows all, and delights, To keep me in my plight. I know not why, I know not how, But but it remains, And I do avow, To suffer on And put things right, So that tomorrow Things might be right once again.

I seem to find myself the most in places with which I am unfamiliar.

Nobody teaches you how to be a decent person. Either you are or you aren’t. You cannot learn to become one, but you can lose your goodness. You can leave it in the bathroom lying on the sink when you go out into the world, lying beside your hairbrush and toothpaste and gathering dust. To be good, you must press it deep within your back pocket so that it may never fall out. Never lose your goodness, for it will never return, no matter how hard you may try.

Would you mind reading something I wrote and maybe giving some feedback? <3