Skip to main content

A Candle in the Wind (Chase Miller - New Orleans, LA)

 


I’m ready for my story to begin. Ever since I was a kid, I always felt like I was born for something greater. Sure, I sound like every melodramatic human out there, but cliché or not, I think that’s how we all felt inside. We all thought the world was exciting and brand new, and maybe that’s because everything is exciting and brand new. Our birth was a match that lit a candle, and we hoped could burn all the air that we could to embolden that tiny flicker of fire into a second sun, radiant and timeless. We felt what I am feeling now as I type this. A feeling not unlike a current of electricity, powering every skin cell in my body to lift the very hair on my body. This stream of energy has fueled every aspect of me in the past, but somehow, that current has gotten blocked for some time. Although maybe it was never actually blocked in the first place now that I think of it.

Sometimes, it feels like life does its best to leave us stuck at a crossroads, wondering where to go and if we can ever use a car or even a private jet instead of having to walk the entire way to whatever our future destination is. My intuition tells me that cheating is wrong. Maybe walking is the only way we memorize the path? Besides, if we got there so quickly, would there be any point to traveling in the first place? So, let me catch my long, lost analogy up. That trickle of voltage hasn’t been obstructed all along but simply rerouted, again and again and again. I’m not sure if there’s any meaning to where we direct that energy to or what road we choose at those crossroads, but it must count for something, right?

 

Of course, we all will have our flame blown out some point; no star burns forever, or something like that. While we have a hundred years or so to soak up all that oxygen and all that lightning, I think we really need to remember to make the most of it. Yes, I sound like a fortune cookie. Yes, these words are a bit self-indulgent. Yes, wildly, I do believe in what humanity brings to its timeline in the universe. The great problem is that we seem to be blind to what we truly bring into existence. While our power may seem elusive, we all have one, at least that’s what my inner nine-year-old fantasy brain likes to think. We search and we search for any kind of meaning we can grasp while being blind-folded most of the time, stumbling to discover who we are and what we bring.

 

Musing to myself about my quarter-life crisis has me wondering what I’m even feeling or trying to say in this moment. I just want the world to know that we’re all not alone. We all are required to wake up one day and choose to start and keep moving, whether its one foot in front of the other, one stroke of the wheel on the proverbial wheelchair, or swimming in knee-deep shallow water, we can’t stop our path no matter how we like. Hell, I believe in reincarnation and even death doesn’t stop us then, according to my belief system anyway. We are a locomotive train, powered by iced coffee and a strange will to be defined by the amount of numbers we own on a screen. The scary issue about our unrelenting force is how late we realize it and how terrified we are that time has run out on us, hoping and praying that our candle in the wind will stay alight.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Come Hither (Annette Redmond Walters - Lafayette, LA)

I meant it not this way but the tears just flow and my makeup smearing all the more, leaving behind that familiar filthy residue. I may have begun to drive myself away, dragging you down as well. But it's done, I've flipped the switch and now it's dark once more. How painful is the music to my ears, I can't stand to be alone in it, yet here I am again. I pray you fly back and safely and warmly to me, though I fear I've dug the grave too deeply. As the dirt shifts within my soul, I choke on those loving words I'd  meant for you. All the fragments of light I see becoming smaller and I wish to be near you in your embrace that might make me feel the warmth I'm missing. And in reality, I doubt I'd breathe another breath without you. So come hither and quickly soothe my dying heart, you are the only cure I know. I cry and cry again, come hither to heal and love me. Come hither and help me dry my tears.
Post a Comment
Read more

Let That Fucker Burn (John Chenvert - Napoleonville, LA)

Let that fucker burn. Let the fire crackle like the whips once did— like bone meeting leather, like screams swallowed by the trees. Let the white columns crumble to ash. Not as tragedy— but as truth, unearthing itself from beneath generations of silence. Nottoway is not a mansion. It’s a mausoleum. A lie carved in stone to honor the hands that held the whip, not the backs that bore it. They called it the “White Castle.” A place of beauty. A place for weddings, for photo ops, for pretending that horror can be made elegant if the curtains match the guilt. But no paint can cover what happened there. Blood doesn’t wash out with white linens. And pain doesn’t forget just because you renamed it history. I’m not Black. And I won’t pretend to carry that weight. But I also won’t ignore it. My people—the Guanches—were taken too. Our language silenced. Our land stolen. Our names nearly erased. So yes, I know colonization. Yes, I know what it means to be disappeared. But I also know this— my skin ...
1 comment
Read more

Lunatic (Lily Lechler - New Orleans, LA)

  “Lunacy” comes from the moon,  Who cycles through brilliance and darkness  Bipolarity’s patterns are not so easily assumed  Opposites not so well harnessed Who cycles through brilliance and darkness?  The girl who sits in bed, wrestling with  Opposites. Not so well harnessed As she thought, her brain gives reason the slip The girl who sits in bed, wrestling with Her body, depressed, her thoughts manic. As she thought, her brain gave reason the slip  And gives the gift of life in a dreamlike panic. Her body depressed her thoughts. Manic  Lunacy comes from the moon And gives the gift of life in a dreamlike panic  Bipolarity’s patterns are not so easily assumed
Post a Comment
Read more