buried...

for kerry's sunday challenge #5

Beneath the railroad tracks at the intersection of Highway 13 and county road 42 my heart is buried. In an old metal tackle box sit the remnants of a past I left behind, hoping to never look back at again.

Within sits a badge I wore on a blue uniform. Something I used to wear proudly. I was the last boyscout. I was going to make a difference. I didn’t know I was going to fend off attempts on my life, attempts on my safety. I didn’t know that I was going to witness a 17 year old scatter his brains with a 12 gauge across the wall of his mother’s apartment. I didn’t know I was going to watch over a crime scene with body parts from a wife and her 3 year old child. I didn’t know I was going to be cutting down people who had hung themselves in their garage, or pull their purple carcasses from their running automobiles.

Inside there is a cheap little diamond ring, not even half a carat, but it was all I could afford. I wanted to marry her so badly, and I was living on a freelance artist’s salary which could afford me captain crunch and ramen noodles in my cupboard. I skipped my rent payment for that ring. She wore it proudly for three weeks. Then, after a weekend with the girls she gave it back to me. Said she wanted to see other people. WAS seeing other people. Other people with higher salaries and lucrative careers. Other people who weren’t so emotional or sensitive.

There are scraps of paper with love poems written to her. Scribbled nonsense that I thought would make her heart sing. Poems that could be country songs had the right singer sung them. foolish chicken scratch on wasted time. None of which mattered to her or to me…anymore.

Pictures of loves past, faded and probably ruined from the damp of the earth. Each photo a memory that stabs like a rusty ice pick to the core of the heart.

Paintbrushes I used while going to art school. A dream career brought to an end by irrelevancy and redundancy.

Maybe that’s what sits in that tackle box, beneath the tracks of the intersection of Highway 13 and County Road 42….dreams….dreams that died. The box is probably gone now, pulled from the ground by railroad workers putting in new tracks. Perhaps they went through it laughing to themselves or perhaps they are wondering whatever happened to the melancholy kid who buried his memories beneath Minnesota gravel at the age of 24.

Author's Note

kerry's sunday challenge #5

-there actually is an old metal tackle box with my memories in it buried beneath the gravel of a train track...

Reviews

[Lily Mae]

I like the thought of a personal time capsule being buried..x
The story itself pulled at my heart my son is 17 and and Eagle Scout and is already in training to be a policemen and you have depicted the dark side of that kind of life.
He's all fresh and wonderful and thinks life is all pretty but it's those things that they do see that rot the soul.. And then there's the time.. wow.. And yes, he's threatened to make me his first arrest.. (he's a little smart a*s lol) xx I love your work.. Hi my name is Lily and I'm a Bradley L. groupie lol..xxx

[John Jackson (El Juero)]

A succinct autobiographical snapshot. Sad, yes, but the raw truth of your words somehow eases the pain a little bit.
Excellent writing. Thank you.

[J]

i would like to know what the challenge was ......

for this is a write as raw and personal as new skin exposed to the disregard of a summer sun at noon. the cruelty of life's lessons perpetrated on a gentle heart deserves all the honor of a proper rite of passage. and perhaps a metal tackle box buried beneath the gravel of a train track containing the last vestiges of innocence is more of a recognition and tribute to the magnitude of loss than most of us allow ourselves in this lifetime.

a truly moving piece, brad. w.e.l.l. done.

[A Risen Heroine.]

I like it a lot, to bury a box of memories...
Well done!

~A Fallen Heroine~

Vision of Youth! I dare not remember! Awesome write! :-)

[Robin]

thats one hell of a box and and one hell of a poem .

[Nobody.]

Wow man. There are no words. This is what it is. I was moved. Seriously powerful stuff put together perfectly. Beautiful horrible life trickled onto a canvas. Bravo.
R.G.

[Michael of Gilead]

Me wonders what else you've buried?

I know we buried a time capsule back in 76, can't for the life of me remember exactly where, but that was a time capsule, not this emotional suicide thing you speak of.

[Kerry O'Connor]

Twenty four is such a definitive time of one's life: the 'quarter life crisis' so often over-looked by the people who should support the young people as they watch their dreams die one by one and realize the idealism of youth is over. Your tackle box holds the remains of your former self.. he was you but isn't you. He could be me (the only difference is that I still have those paint brushes, letters and photos which I should have ditched), or anyone who reads these words, because you speak of universal truth.

Thank you for entering your work in the Sunday Challenge #5

[poetry-kiddo alienbaba]

I liked what you wrote.
It made sense....to bury a box of memoirs in that state of mind.

[Jūdan FyreHeart]

Looking back on such memories is always hard. I buried a ring in an old steam shaft somehow burying them makes it easier. They always haunt us though, leaving their mark. A very honest piece packed with emotion