Predictability

Staying home will do things to you. After an hour or so of bumbling through the same three pages, I realized I hadn't had coffee this morning. Poured the grounds, slapped the lid down, hit the button. Wandered around the kitchen aimlessly. Chose the same coffee mug I choose every day. Noticed a crack in the handle. Odd. Cautiously placed it back on the shelf and chose its twin mug. Began to ponder all the ways I could die arbitrarily, right then and there, in the kitchen. Not in a sad, or even real way. Just in a thorough way.

1. Mug cracks. Hot coffee scalds my hand, I drop the mug, I bend to pick up the larger shards, carelessly attracting smaller pieces of porcelain to the invisible wrinkles in my fingers. I rub my eye. My cornea splits. Eyeball begins to leak. I stumble backward, only to find myself dying slowly, from the large kitchen knife that found its way into the small of my back.

2. The same scenario, except I die from an eye infection instead.

3. This one's a little bit more fantastical. After pouring my coffee, I stared into the mug for awhile. Darkness. The feeling of doom engulfs the room. I stare too long, and before I know it, my face has descended into coffee hell. I am drowning in a sea of unfiltered grounds and hot water, the mermaid from the Starbucks logo cackling (she happens to have the voice of Ursula from The Little Mermaid), I surrender to my fate, close my eyes, and let my last involuntary breath leave me gurgling in a bubbling swamp of coffee.

4. Slip on the tile, crack my head on the kitchen counter.

5. As I'm pouring my coffee, I hear a noise at the front door. The sex offender who just moved down the street storms into the house. He's dressed like Lon from The Notebook, and he's holding a pistol. The kind from the 50s, that's really loud and round. In desperation, I throw my coffee at him and run upstairs, locking myself in my room. As I sit huddled in the corner of the room, clutching my only weapon — a very sharp pen — I pray that it's all a dream. The offender kicks down the door. Pathetically, I throw my pen at him and run to the balcony. We're only two stories up, and my only choice is to jump. I aim for the grassy area in front of my house. I hit the pathway instead.

A sex offender actually did just move down the street from us. So number five is pretty realistic, when you consider my circumstances. Needless to say, I've been very unproductive today. Maybe my imagination is punishing me, or something. I have coffee now, so I think things will get better. I think.

Sleep Disorders

Our bodies are so strange. I was diagnosed with narcolepsy at the beginning of the summer, and now sit wide-awake at 2:37am, wrecked with insomnia. I wonder what changed.

You know what they say...

"When in doubt, write poetry."

(Okay, so no one says that, but they really should, don't you think?)
(Also, did italicizing make it more believable?)


---
sleep,
please cloak me in the quiet
of your velvet embrace,
leave my breaths soft
and sipping,
bathe my lids in rest,
while the night creatures croak around me,
fold my ears in,
to the rhythm of a heart-beat lullaby,
take away the rage of sunlight,
strip this room of its teasing distractions,
leave me with me,
and a dream so sweet
that it nestles its way between
my hands
and stays
as long as the stars
stay winking in the sky.

Treasure Street

I'm getting sucked into that vacation vortex, where all I do is surround myself with books and sitcoms hoping that either will keep me relaxed. I'm drinking more coffee than I did while I was teaching this summer. That's saying something.

I read a few things I wrote a few years — okay, months — ago, and feel apologetic, and/or embarrassed, or something. There were instances in which I so readily committed myself to things I did not know how to feel, let alone say. I don't know. That's the thing with things you make public... there's no taking anything back, most of the time.

I tried so hard, sometimes. I would look up synonyms and try to make my writing shine, in that pathetic way that silver spray paint doesn't glam anything up. It just makes things look like robot barf. Silver spray paint = visual dubstep, and not in a good way. My writing = visual dubstep.

Once again, I've signed up for a year of overcommitment and having too many things on my plate, with my sole reassurance being that I will be busy (and never go hungry?) and maybe avoid the mental vacation vortex that sucked me dry... okay, stopping with that metaphor now — maybe avoid boredom.

The difference between the busyness of the present and the busyness of the past is that today's tasks seem a lot more important and a lot more demanding. But then again, so did yesterday's, I'm sure. I have to remember to sew a button onto one of my blouses.

The main frustration of today is that I took a four-hour practice test for one of three exams I'll be taking in the fall, reviewed the answers and explanations, and learned nothing except that I will probably never get into grad school or pass the CSET, and instead of fulfilling my lifelong passion of becoming a teacher, will probably end up filing papers at the school district office, salivating in the dream that one day I will earn a credential. Ah, still got the drama in me.

The reality of today is that I have spent too much time in front of a computer screen. Too much time staring at blank pages. Too much time self-scrutinizing. Who said I wasn't crazy?

shake well

"separation is natural."

separation from You?
This is why they call it settling.

let contents settle.
contents may settle.
shake well.
separation is natural.

All of You (& Block C)

You are:
fishtail braids and crutches,
a brown shirt and English freckles,
square glasses and pink highlighters,
braids and stoicism,
a heartbreaker in the making,
quiet — but not too quiet,
in love with love and much too young,
afraid of who you could be,
ponytail and white sweatshirt — indelible,
beautiful and rising,

You are all rising.
I want to know you, I want to know everything about you,
but we have five days left,
and I can only think about all the things I didn't do right.

I'm sorry for showing up late sometimes,
for being too tired to smile,
for spending too little time with your writing,
for letting your words float through my ears while my thoughts stay elsewhere —
I could have done more.
I'm sorry.

Thank you for your brilliance,
for your furrowed brows when you focus too hard,
for your laughter that rebounds off the classroom walls,
for all the times you've been tired, too,
and indulged my theatrics anyway.
For showing me why the most important thing you can do is
love,
For showing me that you need nothing more than people to get by —
people who want to know why
the rhythm of your lungs is the way it is,
why your eyes glimmer like they do
while the rest of the earth lays shrouded in darkness,
you are the sparkling secrets the world has yet to discover.

Thank you, students. Thank you.