Una Semana Larga…

In honor of mirror-image writing…a backwards picture of “I will not talk,” twenty times.

This weekend has come like a huge gust of fresh air. The week normally feels long, even though I technically have a three-day weekend, but this week was especially so because all the first grade teachers had gone away on an extended field trip with the second graders. So they put me in charge of teaching all the English classes…no easy feat.

I’d come out of class with a sore voice, murderous and frustrated. There is one class in particular that really needs to be shown who’s boss; before learning English, they need to be taught how to learn, how to listen. My moment of power came when I got fed up and told them all to write “I will not talk” twenty times… half an hour of silence triumphantly won there.

But all in all, I quite enjoyed the week, complaining aside. I felt that some progress and productivity had come out of it. This very well may be something I could possibly do in the future, being a public school teacher…of course half (or most) of the attraction comes in the form of a 3-month vacation every year. This would mean I will never have problems finding the time to travel, even live, in other places, given I get a good salary package! 🙂

Absence

The same script each time you attempt to write it.

Setting: morning, in bed
and not having yet awakened,

the sound of distress from the tragedy
your body has created and believes,
with such conviction,
making its way out of your throat.

Never quite arriving, caught
by the mouth.  Cheeks still dry.

Something like a well, pushing
the one prolonged cry out
to break against today’s clarity.

Or perhaps it did escape, continually,
as thin and unheard as a spirit,
that sadness so complete it seems
to be a warning to the waking self.

To brace itself — that it can be
destroyed momentarily
even within its own walls.
Even under the peace of sleep.

Bulfinch’s The Age of Fable

The days have no numbers.
Neither thread nor color —
air too intimate, trespassing
the pores, tiring houseplants.

The mother reads in her chair,
mouthing half-broken words,
the grandfather also in his chair
with a picture book
of divinities, all gold,
resplendent goddesses.

Television blaring,
no hour lifted from the hands,
but suddenly, you’re doing the same thing
you’ve been doing, except
everyone has gone to bed.

The mind not here but there,
not there really —
floating on itself,
buoyant as a cork inside
its bottle, the kitchen tinted.

No preparation, no longing.
The day so vast it could
turn into anything,
or nothing.