Blockbuster

It’s Friday night And we are driving to the blockbuster on 12th street. You know the one, with the blue sign out front and the m&ms piled up in the front of the cash register just waiting to be taken home. It smells like popcorn inside which I never understood because the kernels aren’t yet popped in their little packages. We take turns every other Friday deciding who gets to pick the movie. It’s my turn and time slows down as I scan the shelves for the next best pick. It might be the lion king or something scary like nightmare on elm street even though dad says I might be too young for that one. My dad wears black t-shirts and khaki shorts with socks that are too long. My dad says movies are art and watches cartoons with us every Saturday morning. We pop popcorn with our newly found blockbuster movie, putting the tape into the VCR and pressing play. I shove m&ms in my mouth, feeling them melt into oblivion. Life is good and I don’t know if it could get any better than this. I want to stay here with the movies and VCRs. The melty m&ms and the popcorn that comes in a package. I don’t know in this moment that things will eventually change. That movies will be streamed and subscriptions will be invented that cost way too much. That movies won’t be in a physical form, I won’t be able to hold them in my two little hands, blowing into the VCR before shoving the video in. That blockbuster would go extinct, not to be known by kids in the future. My childhood was movies with my dad, the drive to blockbuster where my siblings and I could barely handle the excitement. Time stood still then and things didn’t feel so out of control. I was lost in a world where movies felt like they solved everything. It was a tradition until time took the trips to blockbuster away from me. Time takes everything away eventually but I hold onto the memories. I can still picture the inside of the blockbuster, the thousands of shelves filled with different genres of movies. I can still picture my dad loading us all up into his Toyota truck just as excited as we were for the next movie to be chosen. Life’s too short not to remember the good times. I soak them in and hold them close to my heart. Time can pass all it wants but my memories will be for keeps. The trips to blockbuster just can’t be beaten. I thank my dad for creating such traditions for us kids, for helping create my love for movies. If only kids today could know the feeling of a blockbuster trip.-M.D.L

Scars

The scar below my left knee, the one I smacked on the bedpost the night he told me it was over, crying in sheer pain. I dont know whats worse, the scars he left me with or the leaving itself. The calloused raised scar on my right index finger, the one I scraped along a piece of glass and then hid from my mother like the shame I have hidden my whole life. These scars are those that make me. Proof that I’m neither invincible nor shatterproof. Proof that I bleed from the inside out for pain I didn't ask for. The scratches that burned into scars on my right shin from tripping over my own two feet and then laughing, having to repeat over and over how clumsy I am. The scars that I will have for a lifetime that rot within me and fester over, spreading inside my body like some disease. The scars people have left me with, to clean and nurture because no one else will. There’s only me left to take care of these parts of myself, the scars no one no longer wants to touch. I collect scars like prized possessions, rubbing my fingers over them as I reflect on which ones hurt the most. Physical scars cover my body but the ones inside me haunt me the most, like ghosts I can't escape from. The scars are permanent, visible indications that I have had a life long lived. I have scraped and clawed my way into being comfortable in the scar covered shell that I am in. All of the memories of a life well lived. The scar on my belly button from letting my cousin pierce it with a dull needle, laughing together about pain we demanded to feel and let go. Scars can show up like battle wounds, I flaunt some of them with pride, knowing I made it through the thick of it all. I made it through the worst of the worst and I have all of the scars to prove it. I collect scars like memories, holding them tight to my chest as if letting them go would be letting go a part of me. We are all just a collection of scars some more painful than others, some not being about pain at all. Some scars are given to show that we can set ourselves free from the cages we put ourselves in, reminders that in the end, scars are a beautiful collection of memories that we have collected and refused to let go. -M.D.L