a freshwater lake
found from memory; a hike
better baptism
childhood relived
through my daughters’ newfound strokes
saltlessly sweet taste
coves around corners
wind-whipped waves licking the shore
new memories made
exercise
Bike to Work Day
battle scars unwashed
floods, fallen trees, tornadoes
nothing but the bike
The Buck that Burns Across My Back
It is 14:52 on the eve of ESL summer school. We have spent an entire day, AN ENTIRE DAY, planning for a sixty-five-minute lesson from curriculum that we first laid our eyes on this morning after a completely different and unrelated ENTIRE DAY presentation of curriculum yesterday. And at this moment, he announces that tomorrow, for the first day, the schedule will be “different.” That all our lesson planning has just been flushed down the toilet that has become our society.
I cried on my two-mile walk this morning. Not because it was too hot, or the views of the Perfect Denver Neighborhood weren’t impeccable. Or because I had to teach summer school for four weeks to pay for summer camp for my girls for ONE. But because of an article I read about the University of Phoenix, of all things. About how, in five years, their enrollment has decreased by fifty percent. And starting July 1st, a new law will require that they prove that their graduates make enough money to pay back the loans that their for-profit greed has forced them to take.
I was thinking these things as I made my way across town to the locale of this year’s grant-funded summer school, the University of Denver, a NONprofit institution with gorgeous grounds and transgender bathrooms and air conditioning and classes that start at $1200 a CREDIT.
And how screwed I am. Not because I think that the University of Phoenix is so damn amazing that it could grind up the 100-year-old trees of Denver’s “Ivy League of the West.” But because I have to do this. I have to do this damn summer school and have a part time job as an adjunct-but-never-real professor, that I have to bend my will to the beck and call of disorganized, incapable-of-communicating administrators, all for the buck that burns across my back.
That the measly $600 that I sometimes earn in a month at the University of Phoenix is sometimes all that keeps us from bowing down to debt.
And when he comes in at 13:33 and tells me that they haven’t been able to contact more than 11 students for our summer school, I ask him if it will be cancelled, if I will be shit out of luck on all counts this Tuesday. “No worries… it’s already accounted for… a grant. No pasa nada.” And his blue eyes and Argentinian accent are slappable. “And who paid for it?” I demand, the third time in two months I’ve asked, a question he’s dodged until this moment. “Well… you have. The taxpayers. The READ Act.”
And it all circles back to me. The University of Denver grounds I stand on that have been manicured by professional gardeners. The school I could never afford to attend, nor will any of my children even think of applying to. The public education that is filled and funded with so many holes, twenty-seven gorgeous textbooks, full-color photos and activities galore, a slew of classroom supplies including an electric pencil sharpener, that 11 students will take advantage of … all the rest? To waste.
The “for-profit” evil University of Phoenix that has allowed my family to break free of the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle that is a teacher’s salary, that allowed us to live on a pittance in Spain, that has allowed me to… breathe.
What is an education worth? Why won’t parents commit to a forty-five minute bus ride for free materials, expert teachers, individualized classes, and free breakfast and lunch? Why won’t the University of Denver be asked to publish data on how many students graduate with a super-fancy psychology degree and start their salaries at $22,000? Why won’t our government ever just see that EDUCATION SHOULD BE FREE??
This is my Tuesday. Let the games begin. The Hunger Games, real world style.
Silver Streaks of Rain
with my old playlist
i fight an uphill battle
pedal into wind
your words lost on me
abandonment tastes bitter
as you once told me
silver streaks of rain
cross winds with old memories
i. never. give. up.
ten minutes to spare,
i make my destination.
(you are nowhere near)
my life without you:
la lengua extranjera
que no puedes ver
Shaped
geology gold
found in mud, driveable hikes
Denver makes beauty
Cycling through the City
teary-eyed ending
to fifteen-mile bike ride
oh, but donut grin
we stopped at projects
perfect playground, tire swings
Africans playing
(my dream neighborhood:
kids play outside, not with screens
poverty beats us???)
my middle child
pedaling through our city
here: my home, my heart
The Heart of Colorado
too perfect to leave
we book another joyride
through windswept canyon
no crowds choke here
to see daunting morphed-rock views
of painted cliff sides
a slice of heaven
carved by river, rock, blue sky
hot springs and hot tubs
small town gifts await
behind jeeps, the off season
we become locals
Guinness chocolate cak
miner’s offer: hidden gems
found buried in quartz
night ends with moonrise
a ghost peeking over peaks
as full as my heart
My Truths Are Their Truths
I’m angry because even a good day with the kids can end as a hard day of being a parent. Because I fight for those closest to me, I put them first, and I still feel like I am driven into hell in the process. Because I love them so fiercely that it hurts, and their tears are my tears and my truths are their truths.
I’m angry because I am a friend, a true friend. I AM the one you can call on drink number four in the airport on your way to rehab after your family’s intervention, and I will listen to every damn slurred word and offer my condolences and love you and be right damn there for you when you come back and fight for you and defend you and take fucking sides for you and build up my enemies like walls against my progress in this life. Because I am your friend.
My loyalties are fierce and my bitterness is fiercer.
I would never beg to make plans and then cancel them. Twice. I would never rearrange my entire schedule to be absentmindedly forgotten for a snooze button. I would never let my best friend go, though she hated me off and on for years, because I knew she was meant for me, and I fucking fought for her, and I got her back, and I damn well will never lose her again. I would never say I am too busy for the person I once swore I loved as much as my husband of seventeen years.
Instead, this Saturday, we play Life. It lasts too long, he rushes us through the end, and Mythili wins (OF COURSE). We go to the park, the Perk, sip tea and nibble scones, Isabella does her interminable homework with her blue-collar Bud-Light-neon-signs-in-house best friend and my mother texts me wondering why we never ask her to come to the park since they live so close now. I offer the zoo for tomorrow and after an existential pause that lasts between two doses of learning the yoga headstand from Adriene, three piano songs played alongside my baby, and reenacting our Oxford memories with a hacky sack we toss across the living room knocking over pictures and plants, she replies with, “Your father isn’t interested in the zoo.” Though they live ten blocks from it. “Is he interested in seeing his granddaughters?” I die to text back. But I’ve learned to hold my tongue. And my fingers.
I’m angry because when I put them to bed there is a flashlight fight and search and a reminder of two nights ago. And I pull the Target bag off the top shelf and dig through the bug spray, the spare brush, the sunblock, the sweat-wicking longsleeved shirt, the set-aside items for a summer camp that’s never going to happen and find the fucking flashlights because Mythili will NOT go to bed without her book.
I’m angry because he murmurs from the room about my tenacity in setting aside these items, never to be touched between June and June and the baby going to her first summer camp this year, and because my dumb semi-drunk mouth just spills it all out in front of them: “It doesn’t matter because they’re not going to camp this year anyway since we don’t have the money.”
I’m angry because my mother sends these random texts such as: “I’m just wondering about life” and tells me about her millionaire uncle dying without a will and how tracking down his thirty-three nieces and nephews will take years as most of them don’t talk to each other and I have put nothing but Love and Love and Hugs and Cuddles into the lives of my three girls and I do NOT. Do NOT. Want to put my baby to bed crying tonight because she doesn’t even get to go to camp for her first year because I don’t have the damn money and we spent it all on a fucking car and my millionaire mom is going to inherit another thirty thousand but won’t even come to the goddamn zoo even when I offer her a free ticket.
I’m angry because I try so hard to be there. To find joy in those small moments that make up a day, like spinning them on a tire swing or singing along to Taylor Swift videos or opening up the yoga book or cuddling with our books in the corner of the couch or piling on top of each other in an array of pink to red.
And I would be there for the friends who ditch me. For the colleague who won’t even eat lunch in my presence. For any task at any job anyone would ever ask me to do.
And why can’t they? Why can’t you?
Just be there. Fucking. Be. There.
Fluff
cold and fluffy snow
commute like walking on clouds
fluff trickles from sky
observation day
my kids ask, why so often?
my job scrutinized
Into the Wild
fills my ears as i walk home
rich white sacrifice
fluff has turned to ice
girls bicker hours till bed
we face budget truths
and we’ve worked so hard
seventeen years later, this?
progress turns to fluff
tomorrow i’ll step
on fresh fluff from full moon sky
find my clouds again
Simple Saturdays
four a.m. alarm
(Spanish happy hour lost
from my Friday night)
i eat, skip shower
dressed for skiing, snowpants on
but she doesn’t show
friend complications
include the plans i canceled
for her desperate plea
i fill my morning:
yoga followed by a bath
she begs forgiveness
i reschedule date
–best friend dates as good as love–
know all is not lost
in the midst of this
i discover oldest’s lie
and fear my strictness
i write a letter
she reads it over breakfast
with tears, she accepts
younger two travel
separate rows for the long drive
(friends with my friend’s kids)
sleepover ends day
three extra girls in our house
screams, doors, stomps, giggles
simple Saturdays
for the married family set
are never simple
alarm sets the tone:
puzzle-piece plans made for friends
(single, she hits snooze
sleeps the day away)
but she lives with the burden
of no love-led life
Step Write Up 