New Leaves

Funny how

Just last Monday, I felt as if

Everything was horrible, I hated myself, that life

Rested heavy on my shoulders

(For no actual reason—perhaps that made it worse)

And now that time feels so long ago

Like a distant memory, something experienced

By a person who is no longer me.

It’s Friday now.

I sit, staring out

One of the huge, sectioned windows of the library

Quietly marveling at the beauty

Of the tree outside, the

Intricate branches, the sprays of green leaves

Just fine enough

To see the sky through the gaps. A hawk

Slowly circles, disappearing from one window

To re-appear in the next.

I saw my old neighbor today, after years and years.

She didn’t even look like the same person.

(I think of the fortune cookie my brother opened last week—

“You will soon meet somebody from your past”

“But everyone we know is in our past,” we said,

“Anyone you aren’t looking at

Right now”)

We talked about school and colleges

And about how things have changed

And it’s funny how the people who share

Pieces of your childhood

Can leave and grow up without you

We carry the same memories, but we’re different people now

I knew her once, but now I don’t.

I turn over a quiet melancholy

And stare through the glass at the fluttering leaves

Until the windows themselves seem to become a poem, wordless,

Etched into my mind.

Only a few months ago

The branches of that tree were bare. Now each leaf

Is new, but the tree

Is still the same. I hated myself last Monday

And I know I’ll hate myself again

But I don’t hate myself today. The leaves shimmer,

And the sky is so bright

That when I close my eyes, I see colors, changed.

Teacher's Lunch (Love Among the Quahogs)

(Wrote this during a summer writing program using three very unrelated prompts. I meant to post some summery poems last month, but now, though it still technically is summer, since everyone is going back to school (I start college tomorrow! Just throwing that out there), I thought this would be more appropriate.)

The professor’s stomach

Twisted inside him

And not because of the shrimp.

She was sitting right across from him

Dark hair falling out of its bun

Her eyes crinkling up as she laughed—

Why was she so beautiful?

He hadn’t really planned on coming

To the teacher’s lunch;

He disliked crowds

And being ignored

And restaurants in general.

But then she had asked him at the end of the day

English books in her arms

Her glasses perched on top of her head

If he was coming that night;

Fumbling, he had no choice

But to say yes.

Now he tried to think of something to say

Cracking open a lumpy gray quahog

Feeling uncomfortable and boring

In his musty brown suit

While she talked to the biology teacher

About the book she was teaching

In her class, saying

“He may seem foolish, but, you know,

Dreams aren’t something you can control.”

The professor wanted to add something clever

Or witty

Or intelligent

Or thoughtful

But he hadn’t read the book

So he kept reaching for the quahogs

To keep his hands busy

Prying open the rocky shells

Imagining that within there would be

A luminous pearl, round and bright as the moon

He could polish with his handkerchief

And grandly give to her—

She would smile at him then.

He lost himself in this fantasy

Letting the conversations around him blur

Almost relaxing in the noisy, crowded room

Until he opened his last quahog

Slowly

And saw that there was nothing inside

But a slimy, grayish lump.

Of course that’s all there was.

Why did he think it would be any different?

He looked up

And there she was

Laughing at something the biology teacher had said

Her eyes crinkled up

Not at him.

The professor pushed away

His treasureless plate of quahogs,

Stomach squeezing again

With a different sort of ache.

Dreams aren’t something you can control.

God, he hated seafood.