Zainab Raza

Gnome

I have a gnome, and life’s a copy of a copy of a copy, and to be unintentionally, helplessly mundane I’d travel in the transient life every human being meets on their birthday.

But you’re trite, the land underneath your presence is trite, your gnome is trite, and wherever I’m headed to is trite. And the life we think we know is hackneyed.

So I’m crossing borders, I have your gnome, I still haven’t taken heed of its color, red, blue, it’s a gnome! And it’s going somewhere in life.

I’m crossing borders in a typical family- sized recreational vehicle, arid the road is- I just about hear the Southern atmosphere- It’s so hot, the seat’s hot, and the steering wheel.

I’ll soon be nostalgic, I’ll soon be seven, thirteen or fourteen, as far as I can reminisce I won’t go awry in these thoughts. I’m still good and well, searching, but still platitudinous.

So I’m at this border, and these quintessential law enforcers, canines as their noses search. Who knows these noses might sniff out illegal substances. Who knows. It’s no bother, it happens.

All this hype, revolving around ephemeral events, but they didn’t find what they were looking for. So I’m free at the border, maybe, when I cross it, your gnome and I might snap a pic.

Here’s to a new place, maybe I find what I’m looking for, like these law enforcers. Hey I guarantee you’re gnome shall be returned, clean with all the photographs of mental milestones.

The occurrences I come across are chronologically unique, and so is my will, but my moments are repeated. Repeated, repeated, copy of a copy, of a copy. And so is your knock-off gnome.

People here and alive, spry and dead and gone and there, they scrutinized thoughts similar
Tell me when you receive these pictures, you’ll be humanely perspicacious. Ready with insight.

You’ll find peace and contentment, you’ll yearn, or maybe even be pissed, you’ll think, because you’re human, and maybe you will even ask why. You’re human, and you’re gnome is not!

I’m not crossing borders with you! I’m crossing borders with your gnome, there’s gotta be more to this. Beyond all studies, of my soul, body, world, earth, the universe, there’s gotta be more!

If we knew even just three portions of the seventy two portions of knowledge, then humans, it’s possible to bend the laws of physics. Use wisdom as a shield.

But instead of your gnome if I had my dad, I’d drop all of it. All that’s going on, forget about it.
Travel mission-less, cross the border to another place, use this moment as a conversational ice-breaker.

I wouldn’t worry about attaining knowledge from reliable sources. I’d only and only appreciate cloudless cold Sunday skies at nine in the morning, and you wouldn’t have been robbed of a gnome.
You wouldn’t have received all those photographs of September’s sunlight grazing simple dirt roads behind borders. And whether this story would’ve been somehow repeated, at your doorstep, at sunrise

I don’t care. If I had my dad, I’d have all the wisdom I’m currently searching for in mundane moments. Nothing would be trite, I’d have my dad, and he’d have mom, and we’d have a home.

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Zainab Raza, sophomore, attends Northern Highlands Regional High School.