Ryan Greenwood Creative Writing Blog

Advanced English and lunch period two,
every other day we would
walk throughout the white tiled school.
Four long years our friendship stood.

So like strolling on a glass littered floor was
walking with a friend so heavily ladened
with chains worn as jewelry,
and apathetic towards someone to save him.

Never realizing that his broken
center could be swapped for another
pure heart to call his own.
If only he would become my adopted brother.

Ryan Greenwood

I was wrecked with grief,
As the clock ticked closer to midnight,
with its hands standing
as straight as the soldiers I trained.
None of them remembered.

I dejectedly gazed around the room,
taking in the cobwebbed corners
and the scuffled dust where
a nameless henchmen
was thrown to the ground in rage.
Seven minutes to go,
and still the dank house was mute.
I could not punish them,
for that would remove my skeletal mask,
but just for today,
perhaps,
that would not be so bad.
Reality seeps in,
like cold air through the
once enchanting windows.
It lies,
“They are followers,
not friends.”

I lit several small flames,
I extinguished them alone.

-Tom

Ryan Greenwood

Trudge slowly,
up to the tawny flecked steel of the fence.
Stare through the uniform squares
It’s there, rust eaten holes and all.
My father’s truck,
parked slightly away
from the crowd,
shunned.

Remember how my heart would race
at the heavy growl of the motor,
the daily rescue.
Remember how I would scramble
into the rusty brick cab,
and the smell of tobacco and old leather would greet.
Remember that small box in the middle seat,
where surprise candy bars and other riches were held.
Remember the open windows
that made flight possible
for us both.
Remember the clutch,
quivering with possibilites.

But ages were woven in that fence,
Causing the metal to
brown and flake;
Look at the wrinkled steel,
sliced open, for the rescue.
Look at the cab, the smell of asphalt and ache.
Look at the splintered box,
and its strewn trinkets.
Look at the shattered windows,
so like a sparrow
with clipped wings.
The gearshift is fractured and
can never teach again.

A greasy man walks out
and opens the hood,
hooking a chain around the block,
strangling it.
But that’s okay,
that heavy heart left a long time ago.
And natural mourning clocks in,
Right.
On.
Time.

The fence sways at my release.
A final goodbye
to the rusty truck that taught me so much,
shunned by the crowd
who never knew what it was like
to ride with open windows
and rust holes.

-Ryan Greenwood

fatty mountains