‘Dear That Don’t Fear Cars
Greg Bealer is a Writer, Actor, and photograph. He lives in North East Ohio.
Deer That Don’t Fear Cars
As we got in the car
He told me my face looked sad
I told him that's just my face
And as he was driving me home
He pointed to a deer carrying the head
of another deer impaled on its antlers
Not like a trophy
But like a burden
In combat, their antlers had locked together,
So there was no choice but to fight
They were locked together until death
But once it could rip off the head of the other
and tear the thing away from itself, it could live on
“But freedom isn’t ever so free,” he preaches
It will carry the head,
keeping it entangled within itself,
only to be released if it can make it to the spring
where it will shed its antlers
and its burden along with it
because sometimes, outliving something
is the same as winning against it
"Show me a death, and I'll tell you
the story of a life," he says like a poet
And more than anything, I wanted him to show me
To take my hand and tell me what to do,
how to live,
what to think,
and who to be
Show me everything
I can be and can't be
Show me, show me, show me
Show me which deer I was
the survivor or the victim
And show me time itself
and how to get ahead of it
Show me the child I was
and the one I still am—
the one that is no longer a child
and tell me how to not miss what I had
Show me the child clinging to his bad behavior,
to his scraped knees and toy cars
and tell him his face is sad
as if he doesn't already know
Tell him his anger, his confusion, his jealousy
is all stuck to him,
that his sadness is bleeding onto his face
for everyone to see
Show him the carcass
hanging out of the corner of his eye
and tell him what it looks like
his father's anger or his mother's sadness
or something else entirely
Show him what to do when he doesn't have a job
and rent is due in two days
I think it all might be unbearable
until time goes on, and somehow, I bear it
Because sometimes outliving something really is the same as winning against it
Every way I rewrite survival always breaks back down
to the unsatisfying truth
of carrying and carrying
until it all falls away
Max Polenberg is a 22-year-old writer from Long Island, New York, whose work explores the quiet moments, the big questions, and everything in between. His work explores the transition from childhood to adulthood, trauma, and what it means to actually turn survival into living.
