Freshly Dusted

Trailer Hitch

She's spent the better half of her freedom wandering deserted parking lots just after twilight, entranced by the way her shadow flits across the cracked cement, the outline of a figure just barely old enough to know what she wants in life. 

A trailer's been parked out there for the better part of fifteen years, rusting its slow way towards oblivion, an ever-present aspect of the landscape for those who don't seek refuge within it. She perches on its side, scribbling another note into a journal already filled with them. Beside it, grasses tower, and she weaves each stalk between her fingers, crushing their fragile tips. She picks them at their roots, braiding them together to crown herself Queen of the Grasses, an envied title among the litany of imaginary friends she brings with her.

Here, she's capturing moments, raising her fist to the sky, swapping out the middle finger for "I love you," seeking peace signs over military gestures, branding herself an old soul of the new age. She's a girl obsessing over the literature giants of the past, hoping to be one for the future. She plays with fountain pens and ink, letting droplets pool across the page, if only for the nib to dance beneath it, as she does under the opulent obsolescence of the sinking sun. 

She longs for poetry, and her heart heeds her cry, spinning together phrases that make no sense alone but shine in nonsensical sentences. It's not the moment she's seeking here but the feeling it conveys. 

She climbs to her feet, entranced by the last remnant of light on the horizon. In an attempt to stretch out and reach it, she balances herself on the side of the trailer and climbs. Making it to to top of the rust-bucket, where the trailer hitch juts into the sky, she clutches her journal in one and hand and salutes the evening light with the other, thanking it for making the blossoming night such a poetic one. The rising moon smiles back at her, its recognition of a fellow wanderer.

Shoving the journal back into her bag, she leaps from the top of the hitch, tumbling into weeds that threaten to engulf her. Yet, as if recognizing in her a young, growing thing not asimilar to themselves, they release her back to the cultured wild of the domesticated lot and the city streets.

She runs its length and sprints away, freedom spent for youth's reward.

Freshly Dusted

I return now to a lonely typewriter, bedazzled by the wildflowers half-resting on the mahogany table beside it. Dust motes drift through the air, caught in the last traces of evening sun. I have not imagined a desk like this one in a long time. It brings back memories of moments well told, half-hearted menageries of mystery and delicacy. 

I have not written in so long, yet now my heart again longs for poetry, for the Master Hand to tune the strings of my heart to achieve its brilliant crescendo. Indeed, all of nature sings its piece, and as its prized creation, can I but help to join in? 

I seek now to capture the fine tuning of man's creation. To lift up and examine the way dust detours to dirt or to satisfy this yearning lust for language. Before, I filled notebooks duct-taped together, journals leather and time-worn. Today, I type, each key clacking one after another, methodically. Before, I cobbled together names and meanings, attempting to find a reason to write other than my own. Looking for escape rather than beauty. Now, I simply write, and let droplets fall where they may.

There will be only one attempt. One draft, turned over in my mind until its perfect imperfections are rendered complete. My diction will run unbridled, bearing its floweriness in a crown of daisies, proudly displayed beside the wealth of kings. 

Who am I? 

I am one breathlessly seeking eleutheromania, a murmur of quiet independence needing no anthem. I am one who loves the people left behind, the ones who've never noticed love before. I am the one who fills in the gaps, covering the walls with snapshots of beauty and pressed papers that mean nothing to someone else. 

Thus with words on my lips and ink under my fingertips, I return now to this typewriter I vacated. Let poetry beat in every key, new worlds breathe in every word.

It's an auspicious beginning, the last day of May.