First Grade

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“Don’t cry,” my mother tells me. I am in first grade, with a pretty knapsack and a lunch she packed me, and first grade always made me cry. “But I want to stay with you.” It was, to my five-year-old self, the most dramatic thing that I had to spend the whole day away from her, and I didn’t understand it. “You’ll be home soon.” -- “Don’t cry,” my mother tells me. It’s a habit that, as a twenty-something year old woman, I pretend I had grown out of. I’m sitting on her couch writing poetry – a piece from San Francisco that would one day become a friend’s housewarming present – and airplanes always made me cry. “I’ll just miss you, that’s all.” “You’ll be home in a few months.” None of us could have predicted a fucking pandemic that had probably already started, or known the next time I’d come back would be almost two years later. -- “I told you not to cry,” but I know she is also crying. She has stage four colorectal cancer, and we both wrote a piece with the exact sam...
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Nitrous

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This is harder, in a way. Seeing you through a mask is better than a screen. It breaks my heart a little bit each time.

Here is what I think might happen. I think the person that I was, the one I worked so hard to find the day I left Texas with a vintage suitcase and a one-way ticket, she wouldn’t have survived this. I think the person I’ve become won’t fit into her old life. I’m not yet sure what this means going forward.

I need to ask a favor. Will you forgive my broken heart?

They pulled my tooth the other day. I kept making them laugh, so they wouldn’t do it. I don’t remember the song I was humming; it was half the visit before I realized I was doing it.

Laughter is the purest wisdom. That’s what I decided.

I haven’t quite figure out how to describe it. Music instead of nitrous oxide; I didn’t choose the song but by Gd it was fitting. 𝑆𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒𝑠 𝑚𝑦 𝑠𝑝𝑖𝑟𝑖𝑡’𝑠 𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑠𝑜 𝑠𝑐𝑎𝑟𝑒𝑑. Lying in that chair, staring at masked faces, watching them work on me. I felt stronger, in that moment, in the moment they put the shot in my mouth, than I have in...years. 𝑊ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝐼 𝑝𝑢𝑡 𝑖𝑡 𝑖𝑛 𝑎 𝑚𝑒𝑙𝑜𝑑𝑦, 𝑖𝑡 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛𝑠 𝑠𝑜 𝑚𝑢𝑐ℎ 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑚𝑒. Strangers, among the first to touch me. I didn’t cry because it hurt. I cried for all the people that I couldn’t hold, for the family I couldn’t see. 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑐 𝑖𝑠 𝑖𝑛 𝑚𝑦 𝑏𝑙𝑜𝑜𝑑. She pulled it quickly.

Perhaps we’re tangled in the fabric of a world that changed too quickly. I’ll weave something beautiful, with the knots and frayed threads. Those are my favorites.

Perhaps there is beauty in the things that break. Perhaps strength can be bought for the price of a tooth extraction.

Laughter is the purest wisdom.

With everything I am, I miss you. That much I promise.

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