charlie geoghegan-clements : “a piece of scrap paper”
When we were children we sat on top of piles of dirt in our Sunday clothes and mouthed tiny strategies under our parents' watchful eyes. On schoolyards we were an army of grass throwers that surrounded
bullies and teachers. Junkyards were our armories, and the dirt pit held all our secrets.
When we were children we scribbled little plans on pieces of scrap paper. We built giant talking machines out of old newspapers and empty soda bottles to send to town to steal us candy. We planned to run away
for months, and built a fortress in the woods in case the cowboys came.
When we were children we built the tiniest cities out of glass so we could break them and build all over. We dug tunnels behind the garden shed, trying to reach China. We filled them in, each evening before dinner. We wrote little symphonies to play on upturned trash bins and shoelace guitars that we forgot each night, just to start over.
The sun went down and we hid the pirate maps we'd drawn in invisible ink to crawl into beds, warm with the folding of mothers.
Today we hatch tactics that fall like dead mice from our mouths. Tired and scared, we scratch diagrams in the dust covering the floor. We've lost our maps. The cowboys have come. Folding paper cranes, we listen to the humming of street lights and recite to ourselves the songs we wrote when we were, once, children.
We were an army once, when we were children. We marched on ruined cities. We, with tomato soup tin can drums and reckless laughter, scared of one day becoming cowboys, built ourselves a prison out of ash and cardboard and without knowing it, closed the doors. We locked away all our love in a golden-green box to hide in the smallest places inside us, grown over with thorns.
We still whisper when we sleep, and that will be what gives us away in the end. We whisper to ourselves in the secret joy that suddenly, overnight, with a rainstorm, everything will change.
Despite teenage dreams of astronomy, Charlie Geoghegan-Clements is now living in Georgia & working at a restaurant. His work has most recently been published in Versal, The Blotter, The Furnace Review & The Red River Review. He is currently finishing a novella about seasons, memory & trauma.
[ J. A. Tyler ] [ blog ] [ news ] [ buy ] [ read ] [ Mud Luscious ] [ current ] [ news ] [ archives ]
