I am between worlds, in the rift of lingering memory, in the dog days of childhood, bent trees teeming with fig fruits, villas on stilts, skin crusted with sand, and star spangled skies. Sisters in the backseat, threadbare backpacks with their bellies emptied between us, cats cradle strings, thumbed thrift books, tattered paperbacks, and paper dolls. Then skimming beneath the seats for the one scuffed sandal that slipped out of reach, limbs all asleep, blood rushing back in bursts, like lit firecrackers beneath our skin, as we tumbled akin from the family minivan, into the shrunken sleeve of heat. It is never the same, we change. We grow old, and if one isn’t careful, growing up can be slow death to the soul. You cannot let the years use you up, lick from you the last drop.
Society has become slugs festering in the sun, flesh consuming flesh. I am in a seeker of enlightenment, fulfillment, joyousness; leeched of all lust for money, for meaningless luxury. Comfort is for cowards, come sweat and strife, strike like a viper, and I will milk the poison from my mind.
They cry, “You cannot survive outside the rat race of society!”, and I, “Have any of you tried?” They further, “You won’t have an automobile nor a house!” “See these feet, they can carry me, and while you, in your bed, look into pale planks, I look into a depthless galaxy.”
So, go and throw my bones to the wild beasts, swallow your pills, and grit your teeth. What I am afraid of is apathy, egos, and greed, the eluding of truth, regret, eternity. Cut me from this leash! If I am committed, it is to independence from the chokeholds of conformity, of currencies.
I am six, I am eight, I am ten again, in a baptism of sunbeams and folded limbs, freckled cheek pressed to the pillowcase, smelling of peaches and warm flesh. Somewhere inside, I am still this child, seeing the world with wide-eye wonder, forever free, and wild.
"All good things as WILD and FREE." ~ Henry David Thoreau
{GirlmeetsNYC}
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