Looking for Myself in the Humid, Sagging Woods of South Carolina

gus messinides

I am throwing myself forward, each
footstep melting a face in the ground
better than I could draw.

Wisteria flowers, clumped like grapes,
are cascading out of my mouth, vines slipping
& twisting like snakes. This is where

I learned the difference between
frogs & toads & what it means to be lonely.
The creek forgot its banks that year,

long tendrils of water cupping the mud,
surrounding me as rain crippled
the air. I sat there, tracing my future

on the back of my skull, feeling
each finite crack & line, so much like
the stitches of my clothes.

This all used to be field & you
can still find old fencing material & farm tools,
most recently a part of a tractor, circa 1930s.

Fallen, forgotten, found ninety years
too late. Give it a little while
& it'll all be field again, every tree

fallen, faded into the past, forgetting
each memory packed in between
each green jewel. I find myself

forgetting & obsessing & forgetting again.
Losing & finding thoughts held
at the back of my mind. There was a man,

& a house with terrible wallpaper,
& many others, too recent to be forgotten this easily.
The back of my ribcage is blooming against

this tree, like the dandelions that mark the
old dimensions of a house, long gone,
leaving nothing but a few bricks. Old scars

reopened, ripped & rubbed by the tree's bark,
blood seeping down my back, soaking into
the sweet, dark earth.

Gus Messinides is a junior at the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities. He was born in Camden, South Carolina, where he lives on seventy acres of untamed woods. When he isn’t bugging his Creative Nonfiction teacher, he can be found perusing antique shops for old cameras, reading about Morocco, or listening to Patti Smith. He has won a YoungArts award for Nonfiction and a Gold Key from the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.