Choices
Thursday Morning As I take attendance, my voice rolls out just like my high school theatre teacher taught me. “Enunciate to the back row,” I can hear her booming in her high, clear voice. That voice still rattles around in my head, reminding me how to project and how to capture the attention of a room. Unfortunately, the buzzing in the classroom muffles the sound of students announcing their presence. Sounds do not carry well in this room. Some of the ceiling tiles are missing, and there are enough layers of paint on the windows to make opening them an Olympic feat–a feat I attempt every day to atone for the lack…
Withdrawing
Who knew a space could be so packed, yet so remote? Disappearing would be easy; one click, and off into the ephemera. The tethers pulling me towards others fray, then snap like gossamer webbing. I hover over the words: Deactivate your account.
Traveller
When I Left you alone You grew large, expanding Until you seeped through all my heart’s Chambers. When I Indulged the fantasy, dreaming Of leaving, you cajoled With verses from Afar. – – – This is my attempt at a mirror cinquain for yeah write’s March poetry slam. Join us next week with your own cinquain!
A Look at the Numbers
I am staring at the sheet of paper pinned to the bulletin board, but I can’t make the numbers behave. The curves and lines do not translate to a figure with value, much less stay in my brain, no matter how long I stare and how tightly I focus. The second I look away to write down the time in my day planner, the numbers dissolve. The break room is hot and the air feels thick with the smell of bread baking in the kitchens just beyond. My hair matted under the cap with “Torrance Bakery” printed on the front, I know for a fact I smell like yeast and sugar, what…
On Compassion and The Self: #1000Speak
It is Friday night, and I am stealing a few moments at the computer to write these words. I have spent all day doing the things I can only do on my day off from work; a laundry list of odds and ends that keep life going and keep the house moderately clean. Between cleaning up the remains of dinner and putting fresh sheets on the bed, I have chosen myself, for a few moments at least. Many nights last semester I stayed up, red pen in hand, churning through the bottomless stack of papers to grade. It felt like the second I triumphantly finished the last essay, another stack would…
Compound Interest
Everyone was laughing except me. At this point, I had pasted a smile to my face, which now felt stiff and wooden. I probably looked like a monkey, tightened lips spread in a parody of human emotion. I’m usually pretty good at faking things, but it was all bubbling so closely under the surface that day. “I went back and told her, ‘Uh uh. That’s not a raise: that’s a cost of living adjustment,’” Sophia proclaimed, straight-faced. “Don’t get me wrong—I appreciate a cost of living adjustment. It’s great. Really. But, you know, let’s just call it was it is.” This followed a discussion of her husband’s signing bonus, which with an…
Ere I Go
Ere I go, tell me you love me, the way You did when fervor newly found ingress In hearts untested by lust’s impish play, `Fore cares wore down our souls to fathoms less. Commit to me devotion sweet anew In ways my aging heart finds fresh relief From years that the withdrawal parched in lieu Of soothing solace, arid in motif. Though Time be fleet of foot and cruel of heart, Her shoulders heaving moments up and spent, She still leaves mem’ries trailing aft, to chart The road `twixt then and now; marks what was meant. Though two be one through threadbare days, still no Love loses all, `less lovers cease to sow.
Expression
Stand still, and I will read to thee To fit the naked foot of Poesy All of which were words, words, words But in my simple ignorance I suppose Much have I seen and known; cities of men From all internal injury exempt Pulsing with the life of the gods— Again and again, however we know the landscape of love One dignity delays for all— And all the words that I write These are my starry solitudes So I take my treasure home For an Approving God
The Gambler’s Fallacy
It didn’t start out as a way to avoid chemicals or “toxins,” those nebulous little buggers that Southern Californian middle class white women in Lululemon deem the downfall of modern civilization. The only shampoo that didn’t seem to transform my straight hair into some sort of wig-mop hybrid cost $28 a bottle, and damned if I could drop that kind of cash on anything but car repairs anymore. So it didn’t start out as anything but another scheme to try to save a few dollars, to stretch them out until they squealed. I have tried a lot of those schemes in my adult life. A jug of wholesale, unscented Castille soap arrived in…
Giving and Taking
Giving. It’s what most women are trained to do pretty much since birth. Here’s this dolly, nurture it. Here’s this house, it’s your job to make sure it’s welcoming and clean. Don’t you want to learn to cook so you can find a husband someday? Give of yourself, it is your job to make others comfortable. Okay, maybe things have changed a little since I was a youngster (or at least I hope so), but women talk about guilt enough for it to be a pretty pervasive cultural condition. We feel guilty if our houses aren’t clean and well-decorated. We feel guilty sitting down to read, or watch TV, or paint our…
