Hiraeth for the Highlands
Simone Flournoy

I remember Caledonia’s shouting breath
Scarlet kisses across my face
Every bit of my surroundings 
Comprised of the ancient 
Gods and ghosts 
Castles and hoof-beats 
Biting air 

A memory of stifling solitude 
Hazy with the appetite to be anywhere 
But there, now here
Moments in the past corrupted by 
Current complacency and the headache 
Of seven lane highways 
An El Dorado caricature   

You walk with your head down in the North 
Both in protection and reverence 
From and for elements left feral 
A domesticated atmosphere is safer  
Rain goes rarely compared to knives from the sky 
Yet I inexplicably long for a world so visceral 
A hardly bearable existence that begs to be endured
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Simone Flournoy (CMC '22) is a senior at Claremont McKenna majoring in International Relations. She is a transfer student, previously studying at the University of St Andrews in Scotland for her first two years of college. Her work has been featured in the Helix Literary Magazine, the Fresher Publishing Anthology, Messenger Mountain News, and the St Andrews Foreign Affairs Review. When she's not in in the Inland Empire, Simone lives with her family, two dogs, and thousands of honeybees in Topanga Canyon.