What I’ve Learned In 16 Years

Don’t judge distance by a rearview mirror,

Your past is not too far behind you

In fact, it could be tiptoeing just inches away from you, waiting to tap you on the shoulder and ask

Remember me?

Maps are better when read upside down because getting lost in something happens by chance.

Right turns are wrong turns

You may not know that now but you’ll learn soon.

Pick up pennies from the sidewalk

 They’re God’s way of saying “just because”

And before you know it your pockets will be jingling like a wind chime.

Don’t be afraid to get hurt,

Scars are timelines of flesh

They mean that you’ve faced bigger demons than the ones before you today.

Take pain with a teaspoon of sugar, there will be sweeter times to ahead of you.

When taking a math test, choose the answer opposite of what calculated.

You’re often more wrong than you are right

But that’s okay. It makes for better stories.

That little voice telling you what to do, it know what it’s talking about.

Try to listen.

Be careful of rooftops, the view is great but the concrete below is hard.

Never stand too close to the edge.

Until another life, my love

I fumble through the closet drawers throwing articles of clothing frantically, until my floor is a sea of socks and sweatpants as well as last week’s laundry.  I’m searching as my vision blurs like that of a windshield in the pouring rain. The more I wipe away, the more that seem to come. My hands are shaking and my body feels as if there’s acid in my bloodstream; there is so much pain. I told myself I’d never look back once you boarded that flight but there are pieces of you that my heart holds with an iron grip. I trace the surface of the uneven blue box that holds memories that I’ve kept on pause for quite some time. I play them when the night is too cold or the pain too fierce and the thunder too loud. I’ve tried to rip them away from me -believe me I’ve tried.

An anniversary card given in the month of December as we walked hand in hand down the city streets, cheeks flushed from the warmth of our hearts and the fluttering of our stomachs. I never believed it was possible for flowers to bloom in winter until then. I remember the snow falling on your eyelashes perfectly. I looked away at the cold, desolate sky and you read my mind as if it were an open book. You said, “Baby don’t you worry, I’m not going anywhere.” We proceeded to walk and I tried to calm my shaking knees, they always seemed to give out when you came near.

A ticket to the same love story we’ve seen a thousand times before but this one was different. I don’t recall anything that occurred in it because my eyes were fixated on the way our hands intertwined in the darkness. It made me wonder what it would be like to hold you close and feel your chest rise and fall like crashing waves. To memorize the way your silhouette curved and protruded in all the right places like a landscape covered in linen.  I would feel your heartbeat like ticks on a clock and I’d be somewhere between sleepy and senseless but so at peace in your presence. I could imagine your cologne on my sheets and listening to the pitter patter of raindrops on our windowpane. I would open my eyes and see you lying there blissfully in a mountain of comforter. I’d move closer and tangle my feet with yours underneath the covers and kiss you goodnight three times.

A receipt for my birthday dinner, you took me out to celebrate the day love was born. We shared a drink and you made me laugh so hard my insides burned and my cheeks grew tired but you laughed with me as if time stood still, the champagne bubbles stopped moving, there was just the sound of your laughter serenading my ears.

I never realized what a metaphor the time you forced me onto a roller coaster was. I remember climbing up to the highest point, my body clenched and hands balled into fists as if I could fight my way out of the drop to come. But you kissed me right as the cart started tipping downward. I opened my eyes as we fell and I saw the wind through your hair and heard the goofiest laugh escape your lips. You pried my hands from the bar and said “Enjoy the ride baby, it’ll be over before you know it.”  It was.

You sit in her bed and stroke her hair until she falls asleep. You turn down the lights and climb into bed but before you close your eyes you tangle your feet with hers underneath the covers and kiss her goodnight three times.

He shuts the lights and flops into bed beside me; no words are spoken.

What if I dialed your number? Who would answer? Or would I get an operator telling me it was time to give up?

I got your Christmas card in the mail; she’s very beautiful. I told you you’d find someone better and your little boy is something special, he has his father’s cleft chin and his mother’s right dimple.

Me? I’m doing okay. Holding it together even though it feels as if I’m bursting at the seams. I’m a book with too many pages, the readers are desperate for the ending. Lately I’ve spent my time with creaky floorboards and unsuccessful checklists.

Do you think love can crash into you more than once? Because when I brace for impact and I can feel it in my grasp, like the smell of rain before the storm- it seems to vanish. I’m always a few cents short. I open my eyes and realize the only way I can be close to you is through scraps of old paper and faded memories. I kiss him and it reminds me of the way your lips taste. That shouldn't be.

I lie in the dark thinking, how in god’s name is this fair?

But God must be busy because he hasn’t found the time to get back to me yet.

Jusqu'à ce qu'une autre vie, mon amour. 

A Question of Education

There are no more toys allowed in kindergarten. No puzzles, no paints, no games to be played and explored. Some people believe that in order for the world to become more successful and have increasingly intelligent generations is to focus only on facts. So if we wipe away the color and take all of the imagination away, will the children really benefit? Will they run our nation better due to their impeccable education?  Or are they destined to be nothing more than robots? Another issue is that increasing the already stressful education system is causing mental health problems for many students in junior high through college. Change is necessary to help these children grow up to be well rounded academically and emotionally.

Although my early elementary school memories are a blur, there are a few things that will forever stick out in my mind; the rainbow banner we painted that hung above the window all sloppy with our fingerprints in every color of paint imaginable or the comfy red rug in which we sat to tell our stories every day. We could draw, we could paint, we could color and sing and explore the parts of our mind we were still struggling to use effectively. I would build terrariums of the ocean and cover them with every sea creature that I could think of- and to imagine all of this gone is baffling.

I am against the idea of taking the creativity out of learning, which seems to be the essential goal. Who will be the inventors of the coming generations? You can teach children facts and dates, it is an extremely important part of being educated but it is not the only thing. Giving a student a textbook, especially at such a young age where their childhood is in full bloom, the grass never looked greener and sun never shone brighter in their small eyes that have just began to understand the world around them. Fact may never change; dates of historical battles will remain the same just as books cannot be unwritten. But who will continue on and create more? Who will help us advance and inspire others to build new monuments, write new books, create new inventions, add to the New York City skyline? Common core can’t teach them how to be creative. I’m not sure if expert memorizers that we are raising just to pass tests would make valuable inventors or artists or writers or architects.

The words that seem to be buzzing around in schools all throughout America are “college ready.” Everywhere I go they calculate the newest numbers needed to get into a decent school, everyday new standards of “college readiness.” I have done my research and teachers have said that there is no time for creative approaches at learning when there is so much to be done in order to be deemed as “college ready.” I understand this and do agree that learning math, science, literature, and foreign language are all important aspects of education. But without creativity and without looking at things from different views rather than just taking notes from a textbook, how can we ever be truly educated? In Eleanor Roosevelt’s speech, “What I Hope to Leave Behind,” she states, “It is almost entirely a question of education. There is such thing as going through the world blindfolded.”

                It’s time to take the blindfold off, to teach children from a young age to admire the world around them, to write or draw or express how it makes them feel, to just take time to appreciate the physical world around us instead of sitting behind the desk for hours trying to be “college ready” at the age of twelve. To me there are several aspects of being educated: knowledge and curiosity. An educated person studies not for the test but for life. They learn because their mind wants to know, to hold as much as it can and jam little facts and ideas into every nook and cranny possible.

                Teachers and the Board of Education should try to make time for creativity. Because they are directing the future scientists, mathematicians, authors, poets, painters, doctors, etc. but no matter their future career, they are directing the future of our country. If equipping them only with ideal standardized test scores and nothing more, they may be “college ready” but not necessarily prepared for life.

                Another issue that I find awful in the school system is the effect is has on teenagers and young adults. If you have a free moment today or tomorrow or whenever, go to google and type in “school makes me” and watch the results pop up. School makes me cry. School makes me depressed. School makes me suicidal. School makes me want to hurt myself. The results are appalling. Due to this concept of “college readiness” there is pressure like never before. The pressure is suffocating all teenagers causing suicidal thoughts, depression, and anxiety. The pressure to be perfect, ideal students is louder than ever before. Some teachers try to motivate using threats such as “If you don’t pass this test, you fail this class.” Incidents such as those create a tense learning environment and discourages students from studying because failure seems to an inevitable fate.

                I also believe lack of creativity plays a part in the issue of struggling, unhappy students. Not every teenager understands chemistry or trig perfectly and if other classes aren’t readily available how will they ever realize that their talent may not lie in calculations of equations or in the periodic table of elements but perhaps they can paint a beautiful picture or write an inspiring piece of literature. In the words of Albert Einstein, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it is stupid.” We all have different talents and interests and everyone should be admired for them. Passion and inspiration feed education, without the passion there can be no progress.

                Some teachers and authority figure of the Board of Education may disagree and believe that putting all of this pressure to be “college ready” is a positive thing. Taking the color out of learning can help them focus perhaps. But to them I can only say think back to your education, to your passion, to your favorite subject and imagine having never discovered it or pursued it.

                Education needs change in order for the coming generations to thrive. Teachers need to break the boundaries and put down the textbook every once and a while and teach from the heart, from the fire of their passion for the subject they teach. Learning is not about standardized test scores. People all over the world do not fight for standardized tests, the fight for knowledge. They fight because their minds want to know everything there is to know. When the world came about or who discovered what in history and what monuments stand for and whom were important leaders in the world. We have the power, the opportunity, and the freedom to learn. We must find a way to use it properly and to inspire our students and remind them how truly blessed they are to be able to be educated not just “college ready.”

Scar Tissue

We use people as bandages, when one falls off we apply a fresh one.
To mend, to ease, to disguise the hurt that lies beaneath.
You use her in the dense air as your bodies rise and fall like ocean tides on an old, dirty mattress.
You can't look her in the eye...
If you do, you're afraid your mind will start to wander and begin to realize you were lost a long time ago.
You're alone for a reason
You're bitter for a reason
You walk down the street and you would never show it, but you're scared.
The world changes constantly, there is always something new or different or absent and one day what if its you.
You see a girl, thick makeup, scraggly hair, puffs of cigarette smoke escape her mouth.
You roll your eyes. But you didn't know that under her sleeves there are bandages to heal wounds the same as yours.
We all hurt for a reason.
Our flesh is nothing but scar tissue.

Summer Wind

The summer wind ceases

As the leaves become a blur of red and brown

The air is crisp and cool, sending a shiver down my spine

I awake from the endless dream of you

The summer nights where we were lost in one another

But as the leaves fell from the trees,

Your eyes lost that gleam

And your kiss lost that electric spark

I suppose these summer nights could not last forever

Just as we could not pass time’s test

It wears a hole in my heart to know

One day you may not even remember my name

See my friend, I am not one for change

I grasp and grip the memories of the past, I keep pictures in my pocket and live on memory lane

I see you in his eyes but he will never be you

Goodbyes are my least favorite subject and time is not always my friend

I dread how the pages never stop turning and you cannot pause or rewind moments.

I lost you in the summer sunset

Somewhere between the shining stars and ominous moon

And deep in the ocean’s waves

Seasons will change and years will go by

But you will never have left my mind

7 am

She wakes up 7 a.m. Saturday morning.

She brushes her dark brown hair and puts on her wool coat to battle the cold of New York City in the winter.

On her own in an apartment too big for just one.

She wonders why she ever decided to come here in the first place.

He wakes up 7 a.m. Saturday morning.

He puts on his black, faded leather jacket and fleece grey scarf to battle the cold of New York City in the winter.

In an apartment too big for just one.

He wonders why he feels so alone.

It is 7:30 a.m. in a small coffee shop in the city of hustle and bustle.

While shoulder to shoulder on a crowded street everyone still feels abandoned at times.

He spills his coffee on her blouse.

She laughs and says not to worry.

And for the first time he wonders if he won’t be an island of a man anymore, no more isolation.

Their entire lives have brought them to this moment.

The moment that everything falls into place. 

Contradiction, 1st post

Contradiction

Your feeble words tell me that you’re fine

But your eyes have trouble wearing that mask.

The bags under them have grown darker,

Though you tell me you sleep soundly at night.

Your cracked and bruised knuckles, coated with dried blood,

Show me the truth that cowers behind your words.

You tell me that you’re better.

But my darling you’re as hooked as a heroin addict as he swears it’s the last time and continues to inject his vein with the rusty syringe or the man who swears he’ll just have one drink but by one he means four, and by four he means enough to make him stumble into his house at three a.m. to his wife as she shakes her head and doesn’t even bother to turn on the light or scream or yell or question.

The thin lines are as red and hot as the flames of a brush fire, engulfing your arms and leaving a trail of smoke in hopes that someone will follow it back to you.

Your white scars are the ghosts of your troubles that cracked your armor and snapped your sword.

Please don’t lie to me.

You are thinning away, just like the trees as their leaves fall one by one from their limbs in the beginning of a cold winter, leaving them naked and exposed.

When your smile fades slowly as if it were never real at all.

It tells me that when the sun goes to sleep and the world stops watching, you close your door and lock it.

You sit on the floor with your world of pain that lives in the crevices of your mind and when you push it away and shut the windows and slam the doors, somehow the cold still seeps through the unsealed cracks.

You clutch your hands to you aching heart that has been wrapped in barbed wire.

You part your lips but you can make no sound.

You hold the bottle that will take it all away, you pour them into your hand slowly, one by one and stare at the relief of knowing that there won’t be a tomorrow.

But please don’t give up yet.

My sweet contradiction with eyes that refuse to lie along with your words.

Your hourglass has not been emptied nor your fate been sealed.

Let me hold you. Because I was never good at goodbyes.