this mentally challenged boy from the countryside I used to watch him in the fields when I visited my grandparents as a kid He was like an exotic thing a wild beast chasing static pray They had no chance, the flowers he would assault them with a killer’s smile, frothing, and would grab and tear and rip them from the stem and would eat them
Nobody knew why and the only explanation given was that he was insane
then the men and women who saw him would scream at him to stop and he would raise his head and watch them like a deer surprised by headlights Then he would spit the colorful froth from his big mouth and would run home hopping and leaping like a horse through the tall grass
He was mostly inoffensive, this flower eating boy but they all told me to stay away from him and would always chase him away when he got too close
Time passed and I moved to the city and went to school there and stopped visiting the countryside and its wonders I got busy and my busy life drove away the magic and mystery of childhood
The flower eating boy is now but a memory neither good nor bad just strange, interesting
He doesn’t eat flowers anymore because he doesn’t live in the countryside anymore No, from what I’ve heard he’s in some mental facility and it was his last flowery meal that sent him there
I don’t know, maybe if they hanged signs with “Don’t wear flowers in your hair!” around the village and the fields that little girl would’ve been saved and the village would still have its magic beast.
preached all day long about smartphone addiction while his daughter was on her smartphone, ignoring him
“A human life,” he was saying. “Controlled by a piece of plastic with lights. A destiny completely determined by a machine designed by corporations to become god, to claim souls. How blind, how utterly and impossibly blind a whole generation of human beings can be. To willingly subject themselves to slavery like that. Their thumbs and fingers always tap-tap-tapping that screen as if trying to break their soul free from beyond. But it never happens. You cannot break a door by merely knocking on it...”
“Whatever, dude,” said his daughter with the phone before her face
He shook his head and then looked at me. This time I too was looking at my phone. “I see she has corrupted you too,” he said. “Shame. I was hoping it could be the other way around just for once.”
I let the phone down. “Me? Oh no, I was just checking my e-mail. I've sent some poems to a bunch of publishers and was hoping to see a reply or something.”
Daydreaming as a profession 