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The View

(written while several thousand feet in the air)

the ground is a confused checkerboard

all crooked lines 

and rows of trees

like winding scars

the rivers carve their paths;

puddled blood 

in an open wound

here and there

a hair's-breadth 

highway line

points onwards and away

clouds are torn

off clumps of feathery down

suspended planes

of snow

with grooves like

a traveler's shoe prints

A Haiku

consumerism

the heartbeat of here and now

don't buy into it

I Can...

...change diapers like it’s nobody’s business

put my hair in a French braid

make pizza (it’s awesome)

read a book in under twenty-four hours

alphabetize just about anything

kick butt at soccer

tell stories

dance embarrassingly

twirl my spaghetti with a spoon

paint my nails like a pro

eat a whole bag of sunflower seeds by myself

explain sixteenth century politics (true story)

pronounce “mozzarella” the correct way

and spike a badminton birdie like it’s my job. 

And that is just the short list.

Life

“What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

~Mary Oliver

There isn’t enough time. This simple thought is at once a source of dread and excitement. What will I do? Where will I go? I want to do everything. I want to explore ancient ruins and I want to live on a deserted island. I want to eat a real mango and drink from a hollow coconut shell. I want to never see another car or building or paved road again; just endless dewy grass. I want to walk briskly through the streets of New York in a long black coat with red shoes. I want to be a mother. I want to learn to juggle. I want to be a ballerina in George Balanchine’s company. I want to take my shoes off and slosh through rain that has warmed over the hot stones of a street in Naples. Or I could write until my hands fell off and I’d have to use my toes. I want to stay at home and read late into the night and never leave.

There isn’t enough time! Not even close.

Is it acceptable to spend so much time waiting for your life to start? I don’t know. Maybe in the end, the waiting and dreaming is what makes it all worth something.

Varnish

That acrid smell
a burning, noxious
unwelcome stench

Peels you, rubs you away
Dissolved

Now clean and square
her fingernail
is primed and ready

Prickling black bristles
drag your shining gloss
like a red red gem—
you bleed pigment
over solid planes

All week she had picked
you, chipped
you, bit
you, spit
you into a pile of dead, red
flakes

Now you gleam,
a liquid soul sacrificed
over half-moon altars

A covenant spun in glass

Healing Day

Today was stressful and filled with laughter.

Imagine a classroom. Its ten students sitting at their formica desks in circle formation as they dissect and analyze the contents of their latest reading assignment. Now image that same classroom of mature-beyond-their-years AP English students all doubled over, laughing hard enough to burst veins and send fat tears rolling down smiling cheeks. Today, this was my class.

Every once in a while, you will have moments like these when it seems like all the pressure and stress that each of us has been holding in for weeks and months and even years just comes bursting out. Sometimes it comes in laughter, sometimes tears, sometimes both. But after the laughter has died off and the tears have been dried, you begin to feel better... you feel healed. You realize that we really are all in this together and it is times like these that remind you of how close we have all become over these past four years of high school. Oh Faulkner! (It's an inside joke, you wouldn't understand).


Today was a healing day.