i’ll dream in cycles
flowered spinning summer ride
and forget my stress
silver blades cut grass
mad dash for registration
test Ukrainian
new face with bright smile
knows his English isn’t great
how will he survive?
miracle trunk packed
in temporary dream car
life’s a rented dream
reservation lost
we take his lucky number
campsite without view
girls venture for joy
find una buena vista
wood-filled arms return
though we lack lake view
the mountaintop appeases
so rocky, this life
that makes our Friday
mow, pack, register, test, camp
obligations, loves
over basketball
we come clean with our spent day
he out shoots me; wins
meandering drives:
his through streets, mine through planning;
family meets career
girls sing their way home
in Spain, street dinners would start
here? hollow, dark paths
i’m trapped here for now
because i love kids too much
equal, theirs and mine
over drinks divulged
the story of single life
that he saved me from
penniless in months
i’ll press my lips against his
and let love beat all
better than harsh words
or baseball abandonment
why i married him
we will survive this
as hard as the year in Spain
that i so long for
It’s time to say goodbye. I tried editing. Removing posts. I started with the word drink as my post searcher.
Twenty-eight posts. (I might mention that I have 1,058 posts, the rest of which do not contain this word, but would it matter?)
During my search, I read about the beauty of my girls on a glorious Sunday. Of parties I’d had a great time at. Of weekend joy and love. Of coworkers having a moment of happiness after work.
And, gasp, about that awful thing that almost everyone I know does after work, but I’m not allowed to do since I’m a teacher.
This is one of the most frightening novels I’ve ever read. It bothered me so much when I read it, but even more now. I feel I share this room with Winston:
For some reason the telescreen in the living-room was in an unusual position. Instead of being placed, as was normal, in the end wall, where it could command the whole room, it was in the longer wall, opposite the window. To one side of it there was a shallow alcove in which Winston was now sitting, and which, when the flats were built, had probably been intended to hold bookshelves. By sitting in the alcove, and keeping well back, Winston was able to remain outside the range of the telescreen, so far as sight went. He could be heard, of course, but so long as he stayed in his present position he could not be seen. It was partly the unusual geography of the room that had suggested to him the thing that he was now about to do. (1.1.12)
I sit here now in my living room in Cartagena, Spain. I have spent the greater part of two weeks sharpening my résumé, rewriting my cover letter, and completing online applications so that I can bring my family home.
They are counting on me. Trusting me. Just as they did a year ago when I told them we were coming here.
I cannot let this writing, soul-fed, heartbreaking, ever-too-honest writing, keep me from providing for my family.
And so, just as Winston faced his biggest fear of rats, took his sip of ever-bitter gin and ended the novel with, “I love Big Brother,” I am going to have to concede.
Big Brother wins. I am taking down my blog. And with it, so many pieces of my heart that it will never beat quite the same again.
i know you can’t see
what i do on this month’s first
green beauty my blood
he remembers us
five months later we’re still here
just now we can speak
Mythili is eight. She’s named after an amazing woman who speaks three languages with the fluency of a native speaker, two of which my Mythili will never know.
I came home a bit early tonight. My oldest, Isabella, named after my sister, walked the eight blocks necessary to meet me after tutoring so we could find her some semi-leather boots that match mine. Isabella is almost ten. She can just about fit into half of my clothes and has a much keener sense of fashion than me. I don’t know how I’d shop without her.
I was home early tonight because my life revolves around cancellations. Cancel the job I’ve loved and lived for for seven years. Cancel the program for which I sacrificed everything. Cancel my private English tutoring sessions on a weekly basis, because for you it is a bonus, a brief education. For me? Just another cancellation of my semi-automatic life.
Time is money. I say this now because cancellations can be golden.
These are the words I heard tonight, as Mythili voluntarily read books to her baby sister:
“Mama, did you realize the Statue of Liberty was built in 1826?” (Isabella)
(Mythili from other room): “1886, I read 1886!”
(Me, in same moment, recalling the specific childhood memory: 1986. Age eight. Trip planned to New York City for grand celebration of one hundredth anniversary [July 4, 1986] of said statue. Mother and father holding my hands in their hands to break to me: “We’re going to have to cancel this trip. Your surgery is scheduled for that week.”)
“Isabella, it was 1886.”
Riona, the Irish queen, as diplomatic as her regal name: “Mythili, where are those boats going?”
“They’re trying to get the best view of the statue. Remember this summer, at Jimmy’s house, we were on the mainland? But then we took the boat from one island to another to get the best view? Remember, Riona? They built the statue on an island.” (She refers to our summer trip, my cousin Jimmy’s house in New Jersey, the pain of my most recent Spanish cancellation so painfully present that the Staten Island free ferry was the only possible way to see Lady Liberty).
This is why we are here. In five years, they will read about the Romans. They will say, “Remember when we went to the Roman theatre in Cartagena?”
They will study Druids. “Remember when we visited Stonehenge?”
They will chew paella. “Remember the gambas?
They will be these small children, grown so grand, their life filled with cancellations. They will remember their parents’ hands on theirs, age eight. How they loved and hated Spain. How they cried, laughed, lived.
They will remember.
a smooth transition
ironed beneath this long year
is all that i seek
Someone is cyber-stalking me.
I wish I could brag that I’ve been getting a lot of hits on my blog, but I’m not stupid. I’ve had this thing long enough to know the reality of what it is.
The reality of what it is: a release. A pounding of pen twenty-first-century style, my mighty words fighting the demons in my heart, the everyday worries that bog us all down and yet we are afraid to admit, the essence of who I am.
The reality of what it is: a few followers, five or so hits on an average day, and enough likes to perk up my early mornings and late nights, my tired eyes that never seem too tired to read or write.
So when my numbers spike for a day or five, I know something’s up. Someone is trying to find something out about me, something undefinable. I read back over the poems and I think of those moments when they were written, and the words singe with emotion, ache with the longing I felt then, anger over mistreatment, the loss, the desire… more than anything, I look back over my words and I know just exactly what, why, or who I was writing about on that day, even if the emotive distance between then and now has faded.
The words bring me back. They remind me of why I wrote them down. Why I can read over them now and feel the rainbow of emotions that courses through every human’s veins but so few are able to wholly recognize without the God-like touch of art that graces our presence on this Earth.
Someone is cyber-stalking me. Trying to discover what I was really thinking that day on Arapahoe Road. Who those shards of glass were cut for. Why they weren’t on the Brownie List. How I could see beauty in an animal jumping over a fence, a piece of chocolate, or a monosyllabic word.
But the reality of what it is: they will never know my words as intimately as I do. And isn’t that what writing, what art, is all about?
how they glistened
cutting into my foot
pretty jewels as bright
as tomorrow’s sun
all the colors of the rainbow
bottles shattered in joy
their beauty too blinding
to feel the pain in my sole
stained glass of yesteryear
sunlight shining through
is lost in Iberian cathedrals
as i carry the pain in my soul
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