Where I left off…

wouldn’t it be July 13, 2008

Wouldn’t it be crazy

If you remembered me

If you remembered my dreams way back then

And wouldn’t be crazy if after all this time

I decided to chase my dream

And there you were waiting for me all along?

Wouldn’t it be crazy?

teenage angst November 30, 2007

angry discontent man child

put your words away

no more fighting for today

closets November 18, 2007

When I was a child I had many places to hide.

I would go to them wondering if anyone would try to find me.

Hoping that someone would notice that I was not there.

The prospect of their searching thrilled me.

It would mean I mattered.

It would mean I was important.

It would mean was not forgotten.

I lived in an old farmhouse, the rooms were odd, and there were nooks and crannies that you won’t find in today’s architectue. One of the many peculiarities of my childhood home was its closets. They were all deep enough to walk in, all equipped with key holes that belonged to skeleton keys lost some unknown time ago. I was never brave enough took actually look through any of the keyholes, afraid someone might be looking back.  Our faces separated only be a thin piece of wood.  Ignorance was not bliss, it was survival.

My own bedroom closet was deep enough to be another small room it even had a regular sized window. I used to wonder if what was my bedroom closet use to be a room where a small child was “kept” and did they pound their little hand on the window panes trying to alert some unlikely passerby of their peril. The window looked out upon and endless field.

The coat closet was the best place to hide, though it did not provide even a illusionary means of escape.

Long heavy coats would surround me; leather, canvas, polyester, fur. I would push past them to the wall, feeling its coolness against my back; the rough peeling paint against my cheek.

I never shut the door all the way, fearful that if I did, I would not be able to get out. What if the door stuck, as most of the doors in our house were prone to do.  Poor fitting and wood warped with time. What if it became completely dark, save for the key hole, I would some how be trapped forever amongst the shoes and the coats. At that age I had not yet read The Chronicles of Narnia, but as a child I instinctively knew of its existence. Though my version was more grim.

The smell of worn leather dominated the coat closet. Shoes piled high, at least a foot deep in no particular order. I would crawl over them reaching my destination, the very back behind the long coats. I would wait, with the sour smell of worn shoes enveloping me. I was very still. I was a coat. I was a shoe. I was not me. Then the panic would set in. What if I was really an old forgotten shoe? What if they forgot about me. What if in this darkness the closet decided to keep me? What if the land beyond the coats was real, or worse, what if this was the opportunity that the old farmhouse had been waiting for?

The farmhouse itself was alive, I was certain. If not with a beating heart, then with secrets; old and new.

I never waited long enough for them to try and find me. My fear and panic took over and I would burst out of the closet smelling of feet, cedar and must; hair disheveled and matted to my forehead with sweat.

They would look at me, strange expressions on their faces. Maybe they were thinking “what a odd child”. Or maybe they were thinking something else entirely.  Perhaps they were thinking “maybe next time”.

bog August 24, 2007

Quiet murky bog

Still water reveals nothing

 Your secret is safe