nathanzachary

Onlooker: The Spirit of a Broken Boy I see you sitting there on the edge of your bed, quivering bottom lip like a remote levee for your eyes. Your legs usually swing back and forth involuntarily, dancing with faraway places. Not today. He's not there to tell you how amazing you are. He's not there to tell you how much you have to offer this world. He's not there to tell you that she said those things because she's hurting... or any other lies to rationalise her brutality.   I see you. You can't hold back any longer. The dam fractures and tears traverse your face desperately seeking an oasis of support. She screams, "My life w

The Porch Soldier's White Flag O six thirty-three, late May. The fog rolls in on both sides, like a foreign command attempting to infiltrate my barracks. My children...my grandchildren sleep inside, not knowing the pincer is commencing like Walaja in AD 633. I, sitting in my Maloof rocker, offer no satiation to the fog's avidity for attention. Rather, my eyes dwell on the Spanish moss, critiquing the environmental chaos that is its dance partner in the Old Oak Ballroom. Lucidity introduces itself for one last time as the sun nostalgically plays peek-a-boo with me from o'er the hilltop. That giver of warmth and lig

I wish... the justice system would actually promote, foster, and protect virtue instead of corruption; that the systems and safeguards the nation has in place would function based on the spirit of the law instead of the bureaucratic letter of the law; that our lives were not governed by the myth of meritocracy, but rather that those most deserving would obtain, instead of being shunned by a modus operandi desperately trying to placate the proprietors of wealth and subsequent power that they do not readily deserve; that we would eradicate not only the lexeme of "tolerance," but also the surrounding mentality, and instead replace it with a dis