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.

The Afternoon

I am facing you, and my chest is biting into itself, the way it does when my heart is too unfamiliar for my own good. I haven't written in so long, and my fingers feel old, like they've been hammering away at keys and keys without making anything worth reading.

http://jasonmraz.com/journal/2012/live-it-up-write-it-down/

Jason Mraz posted a great blog about his need to write. So I guess this is my own sad attempt. These days have been filled with so much movement — God, I am constantly moving, I am constantly moving — I have [so easily] forgotten what it's like to feel the earth sighing beneath my feet, how it feels to let the sun bathe your shoulders, how one smile can spring your heart right out of your chest (no matter how many precautions you've taken). How we — all of us — long to be loved in a way bigger than ourselves.

This is a tribute to time. To the way summer days stretch out beyond the end of the earth, to the way we feel happy in June, lazy in July, and nearly invincible when we find ourselves in August. The way our eyes spell infinity in different ways, the sound of guitar strings echoing against the night sky, the way we clamber over fences into forbidden lands, the way we drive with the windows down and wind whipping through our hair. Summer is a brief reminder of why we belong to eternity.

I can see September from here, and experience the last two months all over again: sweaty bodies piling out of school buses, construction paper littering the desks, the silence of staying after 6pm, playing The Civil Wars and running out of red ink. The screams of girls laughing, the shouts of boys playing tetherball, the reassurance found in friends sitting in empty classrooms. Life is too romantic for us to not be in love, all the time — don't you think?

We are all just beating hearts, suspended between the light and dark,
We are all just beating hearts, between the light and dark.