Getting the Mail
My exhausted mailbox no longer greedily gorges itself on paper as it is famished from neglect and ill treatment. Instead its twisted rusted base sags under the weight of unsolicited commercial advances. My mailbox is a patriotic relic, profoundly American: bloated from junk mail and empty catalog calories. Its resolve has flagged and its jaw now sits askew, a yawning gaze fixed dumbly on dying ivy. It laps up, in its comatose fashion, the unsavory proliferation of paper pulped from timber for palatable print. And it is in these publications that we pretend not to read the obituaries of crooked, ancient trees and forests. Where hallowed rumors of horror whisper between sun soaked leaves as they quake in anticipation of diesel born blight. Insults are heaped on the unmarked graves that hide between and beneath the pages of wooden furniture advertisements. Does my mailbox taste, with its oxidized tongue, the acrid sap of sorrow and betrayal from these pages that I so idly discard into wicker waste baskets?
Paradise
To feel my gravel shoulders grated underfoot of the colossally wealthy in a town where the world is as small as the marble that has crept beneath my feet. And so I stumble amongst the incestuous social circles, so miniscule they are diminished to the dots that plot my potential or lack thereof. I do not flee paradise for my light wallet is the pair of concrete shoes poured by the mob henchmen of supposed opportunity and so I sink and gulp panicked mouthfuls of failure. Ameritocracy. Bravery transmogrified into ruthlessness as lawns are watered while people are not. To be the last living soul in a town of manicured landscapes where lilting trees and rustling grass gleam for eyes that will not spare a sideways glance. They are hidden behind iron wrought fences draped in decadent foliage all to partition humanity from humanity, solidify a difference and to breed superiority mingled with covetous revulsion. I stand on tip toes, perched amongst paper thin bougainvillea blossoms on which haikus of disparity depart on dry winds. It is from here that I peer inside and hope to one day be rich.
About the Author
Will Dewey is a lifetime resident of Santa Barbara, California. Will’s love for writing and his love for the natural world are inextricably intertwined. His family chooses vacations of hiking in place of holidays in Hawaii, and he tries his best to instill some small measure of his love for the outdoors in others.
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