Department of English

Spring 2007 High School Edition

Backyard Representations

Brittany Beatty
Creative Essay (11th-12th)
First Place
Snow Canyon High School
Teacher: Lenore Madden

July is a lizard, discarded boards, and clouds all visible through my bedroom window.  Through the water-stained panes I can see a brown speckled lizard as he contently hangs sideways on the brick. The unbearable sun that confines me indoors does not bother him. He skitters playfully across the wall, pausing occasionally to turn his head this way and that.  Checking, then moving on again. Birds, who have taken nests in the hanging branches above, chirp shrilly and the lizard runs, amused at their attempt to make an attack. Down the wall to the ground and before the birds or I have time to flinch, he is out of my grasp under the leftover boards my father and I used in our latest project. These planks, once a solid and beautiful living tree, now lay completely stripped on the rocks in the side yard. Uncommon showers followed by unmerciful heat have left the wood twisted and distorted.

The grain in the wood reminds me of how exposed I looked when they told me why they had decided it was better to be separate than together.  That it wasn’t my fault or my decision, but I would have to live with the consequences as well. I moved as stiff as the lumber as I somehow found the way back to my room, where I would let the news reach my heart so it could be pumped all over my body and consume me. Like the wreckage lying just outside my window, I could feel my once-stable reality begin to curl into an ugly contorted parody of its former self.

A solitary cloud that has been waiting on the edge of my view gracefully shifts over the boards, covering them with shadows but not shielding them from the heat. I feel its presence even through the window, like an invisible hand squeezing my head and lungs, making breathing labored and thought nearly impossible. The moments last twice as long as I sit under the tyranny of the haze. Just as quickly as it descended the cloud shifts again, releasing me but leaving me alone in a new prison of my own reflections.