Ben Bonkoske

I was particularly hungry today and I’m becoming a much more well-rounded person. It is middle school all over again. I wish you knew me when I was younger. That time in life breeds a beautiful innocence that understands one another much more clearly and deeply than the complications of reservations for love we impose on one another when we grow older. I can’t remember if I was confused during elementary school or if things just came to me naturally. I was far too silly and people would have to calm me down constantly and criticize my nature. Free-spirited. Naked on camera. I was a good liar, I remember that, but I was also very deep, and believed in mythical phenomenons. I was a superhuman mutant and convinced many children of this reality. I think as we grow up we get shallower and accept less of the extraordinary. I didn’t have much to lose apparently, or so thought many parents who knew me. But what I did have, I lost anyway. Not to mention I am waiting for the day when the comfort of my lilypad raindrop garden dries up and I am forced to figure it all out without a safety net. I can hear the bitter words of being out on the street without a choice. I think of these things most often whenever I can see a solution (an escape plan) most clearly, because like the stupidity that still breathes in my everlasting being, I mess things up foolishly right before any sense of an ending. A beautiful broken butterfly dying trying to fly. It will be disgusting, but who knows, maybe I’m older and know better and I’ll never be alone. Maybe I’m wrong. If I were to bet on myself, I might. If I were someone else betting on me, I’d break my heart and leave. Summer is almost over and it appears that I have built the greatest sandcastle known to man. My plan. It is beautiful and romantic and makes me happy, even if it won’t come to fruition the way I plan (which things, thankfully, never do). Did you know Fitzgerald wrote during the period of modernism? I always thought it was romanticism but I have never taken one English course. If you can’t tell I’m reading him. I taught myself how to read. And writing came naturally and friendships once seemed to be more important than they are today.