It was time to start writing flash essays any way I wanted. As it happened, I recently had an issue with one of my sons. He was going through a bad time and had gone down to our local creek, where he was trapped in dark thoughts. His pain contrasted with my childhood, when the local creek was a world of adventure. From those thoughts sprang this essay. A revised version of this essay is the first piece I submitted to a publisher looking for flash nonfiction. It was rejected.
428 Words
"Neighborhood Creeks"
I.
I had a neighborhood creek. Cutting through the pastoral landscape as a welcoming smile, it was for all kids seeking adventure. The large trees lined both banks as if spectators in the stands watching the greatest games unfold on the banks below. War, BMX races, off-world environmental engineering. I was part of it all as I grew up in the late 20th-century suburbia.
I would visit the creek many times as I grew up. It was an extension of my reality as it channeled my dreams of what I could one day be. In a single day, I could visit the lightest parts of my life as I traveled to Guadalcanal and Daytona and Mars. There were endless possibilities at my creek as it built my life through my childhood and teen years.
I think on the neighborhood creek and it brings happiness heralding from the smile on my face.
You.
You had a neighborhood creek. It sat in the middle of where you live, a cluster of darkness, tempting all kids into its depths. The trees circled tight and squeezed, forming a dark hole in the heart of where you live. Drugs, teenage sex, thoughts of suicide. You are part of it all as you struggle through early 21st-century suburbia.
You rarely visited the creek as you work to take each day one at a time. It was the deception of your reality as it darkened the identity of who you are. In a single moment, the paved path tried to trick you to a journey into the heart of your darkness as you would travel to Tartarus and Hela and Hell. There were few possibilities at the creek as it sought to destroy you in the prime of your teenage life.
You think on the neighborhood creek, and it brings despair broadcasting from the tears in your eyes.
They.
They are the destroyer of neighborhood creeks. They seek to rip out the trees and level the land in the name of development. Houses, new parks, new elementary schools. They are the ones who end all possibilities with suburban sprawl in America.
They took away the creeks in my neighborhood and yours. There are no more enclosed places to grow or grieve. The creeks are now memories in the name of progress in Cleburne and Roanoke and Joshua. There are no more possibilities for life to flourish or wither.
They killed the neighborhood creeks, and now you and I share very different feelings as we speak to one another in the middle of a concrete jungle.
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