(i carry it in my heart) by Hannah Ebner

Anthony wandered the aisles of a Quickie Mart looking for Ho-Ho’s or Twinkies or Susie Q’s. He wanted to bite into something with fake, fluffy, sugary frosting oozing out of it. It had been three hours now since he climbed into his truck and left home, and the last meal he had had was his favorite TV dinner the night before—Stouffer’s chicken nuggets with mashed potatoes and corn. His hometown, Winkleman, Arizona, was full of tumble weeds and a handful of lonely people who listened to country western music and worked in the copper mine. It was called Winkleman, for Christ’s sake. Anthony didn’t like any of the people in Winkleman, except for his mom. His dad was an angry copper miner who thought that T.S. Eliot was a company in Phoenix.

When Anthony found his grandfather’s old boxes of books five years ago, he was a shy thirteen years old in a town where all the young people knew each other and the cool place to hang out was the gas station. Anthony was short for his age, and thin. He wasn’t picked on in school or anything, but he made sure to look at the ground when he walked so that people would leave him alone. Lifeless brown hair fell across his calm, blue eyes, but most people hadn’t seen them.

Books may not have excited Anthony in another time and place, but back then, reading was a last resort. His mom’s dad used to be an English professor at Arizona State before he got fired for drunkenly assaulting one of his students. After the funeral, Anthony found the books that Grandpa Joe had left to his mother—the only thing he left her—and was intrigued. His grandpa’s books were classics: Catcher in the Rye, 1984, To Kill a Mockingbird. He read through three boxes of books before he came to the fourth and final box. Instead of novels and classics, it was filled with poetry. Unlike the novels, Anthony could read poems over and over again and they would still be fresh and alive. More than Holden Caulfield or Huck Finn, Anthony identified with poetry.

One night, he was reading e.e. cummings in his bedroom:

listen
beloved
i dreamed
it appeared that you thought to
escape me and became a great
lily atilt on
insolent
waters

That was the start of one of his favorite poems. When he read, his heart beat, something swelled inside of him, and he caught his breath. The something that swelled was the same something that hated Winkleman. Anthony did not belong there. That night, his father got home late and slammed the door so that the whole house shook. Anthony jumped every time. It had started when Anthony was a freshman in high school and his dad fell off the wagon. He could hear everything—his dad stumbling and yelling, his mom crying, his dad yelling. He wasn’t even saying words. Worse than listening to the dining room chairs get knocked over, and worse than the broken dishes in the morning, Anthony hated hearing his mother cry.

The next morning, Anthony re-read the poem that his dad had interrupted. After eighteen years, it was time. He left his mom a note promising her that he loved her and that he’d call when he got somewhere. Under the note, he left her his other favorite e.e. cummings poem—“i carry your heart with me(i carry it in”, and he knew that it would make her cry. They would be tears of love, loss, and understanding, not of pain or anger. When he read it, his heart swelled for her and tears came to his eyes, but he felt he had no choice. On a map he found a town in New Mexico called “Truth or Consequences.” He would spend a night there on his way to Santa Fe—it was called Truth or Consequences, for Christ’s sake. He took a few shirts, an extra pair of jeans, all of his underwear, his toothbrush, and his poetry anthologies, and sat anxiously in the cracked leather driver’s seat of his old truck. It was 7:00 a.m., and he didn’t want to wake his parents by opening the fridge. Adrenaline and painful loss made his fingers tremble as he turned the key in the ignition and gazed at his old brick house with remorse. He would come back for his mother one day. The dusty gravel crunched as the wheels turned and he pulled out of the driveway.

Three hours later, the buzzing fluorescence of the Quickie Mart flickered like his low blood sugar nerves. He bought a package of Suzie-Q’s and a carton of milk. His mom always wanted him to drink his milk. The plastic wrapper crinkled as he opened the chocolaty breakfast on his dashboard, and he bit into the cake and frosting hungrily. Three hours out of Winkleman and his survival-mode numbness began to wear off. His muscles ached from tension and a bad night’s sleep, and he wished that he was five years old again when his mother used to rub his back to calm him after he had a bad dream. He hoped that once he reached his hotel room in Truth or Consequences he would feel comforted by the quiet of solitude. At least the poetry would comfort him. Or amaze, awaken, and inspire him. He gulped down the rest of his milk, threw away his garbage, and looked at a map before he got back on the road. It was 110 degrees outside, and he rolled the windows down.