We Thought It Was Freedom & It Was an Accident, I Swear

• Facebook
• Instagram

Kevin Brown

__________

We Thought It Was Freedom

Every summer, our mother hid our shoes from us.

She took our tennis shoes—the knock-off Nikes and Keds we bought at Hills, the knock-off department store that went under before Wal-Mart arrived—even our sandals that were so black they looked like they were made from recycled tires before that was cool, the pair I wore when I kicked a skateboard Cook pushed at my shins as I tried to prove my masculinity, but only ended up with a bruise; she took those shoes and sandals from our closets and buried them in the bottom of bag behind the washing machine, where she knew we were never look.

So we ran through neighbors’ yards as if we were dodging ghosts in a graveyard and played around our subdivision’s pool barefoot, collecting cuts underneath our big toes, scrapes and scratches decorating our heels, so we could afford to eat meat with every meal, so we could afford new notebooks and pens and protractors the following fall, so we could afford a new shirt for my brother that would find its way to my smaller build in a few years.

We knew the money my mother saved allowed us to have ice cream from Kay’s once a month when it was warmer, but we never noticed how she was toughening our soles for a world that would give us nothing beyond what we could steal from it.

__________

It Was an Accident, I Swear

Because of a lack of fine motor skills and poor self-discipline when my father tried to force me to help him build a fence, I have carved out a career in white-collar work

And due to a lack of interest in material goods and a firm belief in the benefts of public libraries, among other so-called socialist services, I have become rich

Not the name-in-the-news type of rich, but certainly in the one percent of the wider world

And thus I have become the type of person who says, When my wife and I were in South Africa a few years ago…

And I have become the type of person who says, But we give a good percentage away to charities

And I have become the type of person who takes a week and a half or two-week trips every summer, save for when we travel internationally, when we’re gone longer

And I have become the type of person who checks his retirement account only when it’s crossing milestones

And I have become the type of person with a retirement account built on a capitalist system I love to criticize

And I have become the type of person who hires home repairs and mowing services staffed by people without my privilege

And I have become the type of person who says, But I haven’t changed at all

__________

Kevin Brown (he/him) teaches high school English in Nashville. He has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. You can find out more about him and his work on Twitter at @kevinbrownwrite or on his website.

__________

🢠 Back Next 🢡

To learn more about submitting your work to Boudin or applying to McNeese State University’s Creative Writing MFA program, please visit Submissions for details.