Canton Writes: HS Nonfiction Winner

The Canton Citizen, a sponsor of the annual Canton Writes contest, will publish a selection of winning entries from the 2022 contest as space permits.

The Banana Peel
By Emily Kelley
1st Place – High School Nonfiction

It’s still here. Yellow and mottled, growing browner by the day, but wow, it’s still here, as I work my legs up the pavement path on a Tuesday afternoon. My feet dance in a rhythm across the sidewalk, and even when I’m not on the sacred run, and they yank me to and fro like a marionette on the stage of life, the banana peel on the sidewalk of Washington Street is still there.

In February, when the whipping wind chill would curl up around my earlobes, there it was, nestled under the ice, and now in May, as the sun over-enthusiastically says hello again to my shoulders, there it is.

It really is silly, of all the things to write about, I picked the banana peel I’ve run by for months. Cars whir by, some familiar and some unknown. First they’re speckled with road salt, which gradually melts away with the snow, replaced by a college sticker signifying wherever that car will whisk away the people I’ve grown up with.

The cars change, people shift golden tassels on green caps, the church I always run by, where I was baptized, is now hushed and boarded, but still, every jog, I have to dodge that banana peel. Who left it there? Would they be weirded out that a 17 year old stranger uses their discarded snack as a precious landmark? That their long-forgotten fruit represents the half-mile mark for a weary young runner? That banana peel is my silent, sweating salvation. When the world around me is whirring, with SAT scores and “what schools are you thinking about”s and adulthood impending in less than 5 months, and I put on my Brooks sneakers and dash towards any other place, the banana peel is faithfully waiting for me.

In life, the world around us is always changing, a never-ending series of revolutions we are unable to control. But in the midst of all the chaos, something completely unexpected, something messy and strange, is the constant. The world around us will keep shifting and rocking and spinning, but you must find the beauty in the overlooked constant in your life. Find your banana peel.

Short URL: https://www.thecantoncitizen.com/?p=90383

Posted by Canton Citizen on Aug 26 2022. Filed under Featured Content, Opinion. Both comments and pings are currently closed.