Friday, May 12, 2017

WRITER'S SPOTLIGHT: LiSean McElrath


Mother

by LiSean McElrath


The wind blows and time slows

Stops
and reverses to a simpler time

The gusts of wind are exchanged with the shaking of the train car under my feet
The smells of grass and woodchucks in this lonely park are replaced by the smell of your good perfume
The perfume that smells like cherry blossoms

It engulfs my senses and you wipe away any fear of a train car accident with the touch of your hand upon mine and a sly smile that could convince an atheist that they were in the hands of God

We were on our way downtown to your place of work
You saw it as a job but it was my escape route

I was tired of being home
Being overgrown
Being anywhere that wasn't with you

Mom

To this day
To this very moment
Thoughts of you manage to tango their way into my mind and start entire fiestas

You loved to dance with me
Even if it were a simple step touch
that was always enough

You taught me to dip and turn and spin
You taught me that as long as I was having fun I could always grasp a win
You taught me that money is not the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow
You taught me that family was the thing you needed most in life
You taught me to use my heart before all else because maybe this world is a horrible place but that's just because it hasn't been exposed to light of our love
You taught me that it was okay to lack material things as long as you had the spirit to feed your soul
You taught me how to run away from him

I'm sorry
He is not the point of this
He is not the reason I'm breathing in cherry blossoms instead of suburban parks

I'm not pouring my heart out onto this page as if it were the ink itself because of him
I'm doing this because it's been 12 days since I decided I am not coming back home and the everlasting smile that used to take up four fourths of your face is gone

But it is not gone because of me and it did not disappear over 12 days
Your light, beliefs, and character have been molding and changing for years
And it is tearing me apart

It has been tearing me apart because the woman that I
spoke to on night 11 of cutting ties is not the same woman I rode on trains with 10 years ago

The woman who would give to anyone in need has died
The woman who lit up every single room she walked into with a strut and smile no longer walks the face of this plane
The woman who danced in the middle of an empty house with a heart so big that it became her metronome can no longer keep tempo

The music is fading and if you know me then you know that the day I admit any piece is coming to a stand still is the day a tiny piece of me dies as well because music

Music is whatever you want it to be
Music is individuality/music is an expression of self
Music is meant to be shared

And without my metronome
Her heart
I just can't keep a steady beat anymore

The smell of cherry blossom is being replaced by the smell of a dusty, broken, empty home
I don’t hear the music stop

I feel it in my bones


Runaway

by LiSean McElrath

I'm not trying
to set off matches into a small can of gasoline in the middle of a forest in order to watch the audience's eyes light up like wildfire
I'm not trying
to be the cliche love stricken man who finds the love of his life on a boat
I'm sure as hell not trying to seek anyone's pity for fallen off my pedestal of being okay with being alone and into the cold hard red tile flooring of
this thing
this feeling

that people refer to as love
hell no
I just wanna write
I wanna write about how she made me feel
how she made me feel like I wasn't alone in a sea of hormonal madness even though I had spoken to every individual in the crowd

I wanna write
about how speaking to her made me forget about freezing temperatures
passed loved ones
and horrible ex girlfriends
I wanna write
about how my heart flew out of my chest like bat out of hell and we caught up to by asking questions
by letting our guard down
for one hour I talked to her
in that one hour I had told someone more about myself then I had told anyone in 18 years
in that one hour I had learned more about a person than anyone could learn about her in any amount of time

for one hour I did not have any fear
I did not have a single care in the world

Jesus Christ the only thing I could fully process was how I was going to convince her to runaway to New York with me
I wanted her to drop all of her baggage
all of her fears and regrets
and to just latch on to hopes and aspirations as if it were the steering wheel to a brand new Mercedes Benz or a spaceship
because goddamn it what we felt was out of this world
and no
this was not a one way love lane

I saw it in her eyes
I felt it in her hands
but no
we aren't going to run away and live happily ever after
we are going to go back home
and pretend it never happened
because wanting something this bad and not being able to have it
would hurt a hell of a lot more.

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