Another Block Of Thought
Often, it's all I can do to look.
Look here. Over there.
Can you stand the sight of what's behind you?
Do you close your eyes against what's ahead?
Some days, I'm only the one who looks.
Most times, it doesn't to a lot of good to think about where I stand.
Doesn't stop me.
From the few days I let thoughts overpower me.
If I can just get you here with me, on this road with the houses that are built exactly alike, but have different doors and different colors of brick, maybe. Maybe something.
The one I lived in for years was the first built. On the corner, lefthand side, all the way down. Before that, meadows bursting with bees and those tiny, buzzing, numerous gnats lined either side of the lone street, another connecting it to a small road, another connecting it to town.
I smile. I was little. I liked the flowers - I picked them for Mommy a lot.
You know, I think a part of me mourned each time another "home" was built and the trucks pulled in and another dozer dug, and that section of riotous color was forever gone from those fields.
Ironically, our subdivision was called The Meadows.
And as I grew, the flowers dwindled as people paid more and more money for bigger and larger houses.
Every now and then, when spring comes, I look at the small spaces between them at the stems and petals that still break ground.
Not as many, not as much color. But they're there. And a soft uptilt at the corners of my mouth bring tears to my eyes.
I'm here, too. I made it, but I'm not what I used to be either.
I have these days and these moments and I wonder what the block will look like years from now.
What I will look like years from now.
God, I'm just a kid.
And then I think. That maybe I won't make it to far enough to change much. Never very productive, thoughts like that.
What flowers remain are pretty, and ugly. The stubborn weeds that occasionally bloom a flower. Awareness that allows resistance that allows survival.
Is that what I am?
Maybe, as I look.
Is that what I'm like?
Maybe, as I think.