Barbara--an essay for perpich kids

There were two teachers at the arts high school who taught theatre. As an in coming junior you’d first meat Barbara Morin, and then alternate by semester between her, and Tory Peterson. If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to be in constant contact with eleventh and twelfth graders, they could both certainly tell you- Theatre classes often run late into the night when Dress rehearsals roll around. Spending eight hours strait with our class was not uncommon—doing multiple run throughs and additional blocking or scene rehearsals. Barbara was always very motherly with our class. I guess it was silly of me to ask her if she remembered our class,
“Oh yes we loved your theatre class so much, some people still ask about your class. One of the student’s just the other week asked me if we liked their class better than the juniors, and of course you can’t answer that. I just said, ‘we like your class very much’ and she asked ‘You liked Dani Tope’s class don’t you? Tory liked that class too.’” Barbara paused and laughed. “You guys were so nice to each other, no little divided groups, you were very joyful.” I couldn’t help but think about Dani at this point, she had been my room mate when I first moved into the school’s Delta Dorm. I eventually wrote her a song, it went ‘Little Dani Tope, Little Dani Tope! So itty bitty, little Dani Tope!’ She was very slight, but had quite the prowess about her. I remember the first Halloween in the Dorms I went trick or Treating with another theatre girl named Mallory, while Jenn and Jen took Dani to a visual arts kid’s house, Ryan, and with a few other kids, got her high for the first time. Later I saw a video clip from it, she was wearing large clown shoes, and talking about cannibal babies, eating off breasts instead of breast feeding… or perhaps quite literally breast feeding.
I sat with the cell phone against my ear. How strange, I thought. I’d expected to feel awkward talking to Barbara after so long but, as always, she made me feel incredibly at ease. I couldn’t help but asking the typical question of her, my curiosity was growing like weeds. “Is there anything about Perpich you think people tend to miss? Or not understand… like, a common misconception?
“Not really. I guess Tory says the general Twin Cities’ impression is that kids take a lot of drugs here, but it’s really no different from any other school. Ten years ago I guess there was a dealer dealing in parking lot at the dorms but whoever it was graduated and left. In the last twenty years I’ve been here that’s the only time I can ever think there was a problem, you know, a kid came to school high, another one was hiding under desks. Sometimes people seem to think every one at an art school is funky and strange… but I think it’s more of a projecting onto the school of what people think of artists, or the thoughts that ‘Oh they do really weird theatre there.’ Well, it is off broadway, but it’s been around for 30 40 years, it’s nothing extremely weird, it’s just that most high schools are still doing theatre from the 50s. We have a goal to do plays that make use of the whole ensemble, the whole company; not two leads—everyone is there to learn and grow.” She went on to say that in reality the art high was really full of well behaved, reflective children –very kind to each other. I told her the school was like an incubator, she said it was a womb. I told her about the rowdy crowd at college,
“At Perpich, no one thinks it’s funny to rip up the art on the walls, and no one steals your shit,” I say. She sighs, and says it’s hard to believe that Perpich has its own little world, separate. The truth is, it sort of does—it’s unusually free. The atmosphere of acceptance can be over whelming, and as a female with a female majority I think it helped some insecurities I’d had.
Barbara has the light pattern of wrinkles that make me think she’s lived a full life even with so much time left in front of her. She wears glasses, with slim silver frames, and I can distinctly recall a pair of wide hoop earrings she’s wear against her short blond hair. She wore denim jackets, she wore kakis, she wore rabbit ear hats. She use to be a kid, and still, in most cases, still was. Yet she had the three steps away that every teacher seemed to at the arts high. She barely recalled the hicky wars that four of the girls in our class participated in. Lauren and Jen for sure, and I believe also Dani… But I do remember the purples and reds and fading banana yellows all over their necks, chests, and even legs. I don’t know who won, but I know Barbara finally put a stop to it for the sake of the up and coming performance.
I guess it makes sense, I remember who liked who, who dated who, and what went on behind the curtains… and Barbara remembers the basics of any new Junior class, like, the first month is always awkward, and trying to get to know an entire 15-20 loud eccentric kids in time to get them into a theatre group. She says she’s given up trying to make judgments until after the first two months, “You either need time for them to drop their mask, or time for you to acclimate to their, sort of, strange seeming behavior,” she’d said tentatively. She’s right in saying that Theatre is an entirely different way of interaction. “I wish all of life was like theatre, like making a play. I guess it is, but there’s some thing elevated about the interaction that’s good for every body. It’s a different form any other kind of social interaction. You talk about important things to the human experience, it requires us all to be thoughtful and have fun at the same time. It’s not the typical ragging on about personal problems, and no one tries to over step boundaries because usually every one wants to do well. It’s a really interesting process.”
I myself remember that, not knowing these kids, and being plunged in for better or worse as a group. You can make or break a scene based on one interaction, so despite who does or doesn’t get along, we all hunker together. Despite all likely hood for the average sixteen-year old self-absorbed kid, we all bonded, and succeeded. There were several difficult situations, scenes with a lot of trust involved. Being movement theatre, there were times when we’d lift Jen, or Dani, high over our heads, and carry her about the stage. We were in close tumbling physical contact.. of course, that brings about another issue all together.
It is officially on Barbara’s syllabus, in order to let people know before it happens, that in the performing arts one can’t come to class really… smelly. You must bathe, wear clean clothes, and throw out wear rotten shoes. If one chooses not to follow this rule she will talk to you and the nurse will talk to you until you understand that you really need to be clean—you will not be allowed into the classroom, if you are noticeably odiferous. Similar situations have come up over the year with distractions of women who decide not to wear bras, or men who decide that maybe the gaping hole in the crotch of their pant’s isn’t as noticeable as they think. “You have to remember,” she said to me, sproaching the end of our conversation, “teenagers are extremely self absorbed, though at the arts high it’s a little less, they’re a little more tuned in.”

Come Out Come Out here Ever You Are--a prose poem

Like the click or a clack of a train changing tracks. My bones, you’re in my bones. They pop and they creak in the morning, the crack and they gravel all day. You’re churning rocks like butter in my joins. You, who threw me to one side when my knee gave out, sipping my marrow like cider from my femur straw. And I took vitamins and drank milk. I rode bike and ate well: I knew I would forget you and your teeth and your skin, under my skin between my fleshes and I buried you down into my bones—come out come out! Eeyaki! Olli olli oxen free. So, you’re free. Now please let me go on my way.

Girl Crush-an essay

I have a girl crush, it’s big and fat and as high as the moon! She’s as high as the moon too, full moon bike rides and beautiful. Her hair is brown and her skin tans- bike riders tan, and her zig zag sandal feet delight me. She has a fire, a spark, a flame, a desire… and I have a cliché, but it’s true: She’s fierce in there. She once told me, “I think I would have made a better boy” and I think she’s lovely and I think she’d still be lovely… as a boy.
I was calm the last time we met, her and I. There was cider and cookies and I met some of her old friends. I wanted to sneak her away, all giggles, and ask her to tell me anything. She’d been gone on what I imagine to be a ride chased by autumn across the state, and her headband was pink riding back against the wind. Bemidji is her home she says, and I wonder why she’d settle for such a small thing when she’s so huge inside, at least, to me. But the town does grown on you, and she’s seen more than I have. I think her roots are much deeper than any I’ve ever had. I wonder how warm the soil gets down there, and if she would keep me warm too, if I stayed long enough to plant myself down.
But she disappeared while she was gone, unclouded my head and I realized I wouldn’t be in Bemidji long; two more years, maybe. I knew that any emotional manifestation would never leave my heart to reach her hands. It was quite the laugh of a though to bubble over my lips as I kissed my boyfriend, and vaguely I thought of her kissing hers. I wondered once if she would be my boyfriend. I wondered twice if she would let me take her out for milkshakes. Well, I lied, I thought about the milkshake one more than just twice. I wanted to sit her down across the booth, share her thoughts, have her laughing around her straw, tearing at her napkin. I bet she’d get vanilla… if they made it non diary, and non soy. No, no, I’d told myself then, I can’t ask her to go out, maybe I could ask her in? Now that I don’t have my own home that is. I was a renter, with a dining room table, and a bountiful kitchen—now loving in a cramped dormitory room—the community kitchen smells and has no windows. I could never ask her here, in with the smells and clutter. I feel cluttered! I have too many strings attached to each of my parts to try to give her my heart, my hand, much less a second glance… but I do! I do! I look, and I like and I smitten away.
I have no such right to be captivated! I am not her love, her light! I am just a girl still. Were I not, I would write about her mouth, or her eyes, or the way she breathes. I would love to write about even one of these things in accuracy. But, we are not close. I’m too panicked when I look in her eyes… I think they’re brown, but all I really know is my face is red—after all, maybe when she wears green, they pin prick hazel. Maybe they’re deep enough to blacken on grey nights when she’s sitting and sighing. I’ve never been close and quite enough to hear an individual breath—separate and resting. I’d like to sit with her, quiet and resting. Tonight however, none of the details come to me! For I know I’ve stared at her mouth but I’m certain I was not concentrating on aesthetics! Were her lips thin? I think so, but why can’t I be sure? I’m certain her boyfriend is sure… I’ll even bet her other friends know. I wish I were an other friend.
I want to pup this fizz, shake the can and release. Drop this pressure to the ground where I can laugh over it in later days. I doubt she cares my heart beast fast for her. I doubt she knows the drop in my stomach every time she winks at me—a habit I find so charming and undeniable that I wish I could pick it up. Or maybe she does know, because I get far too loud around her… or I backfire and become too shy. She’s just got this spice, like a strait cinnamon zing, and all I’ve got is a big fat girl crush.
I am a big fat girl crush, over the moon, head over heels, and she doesn’t even wear heels! But the secret I keep down in myself, out of even my heart, is that if I could quicken her pulse too, if she wanted each wink to hit me so hard, then I don’t know what I would do. I know we’re no perfect for each other, that we have different paths. I don’t know what she would ask of me, or if there’s anything I could even give her, but I would write her stories, and read her books. I’d learn to cook her favorites, and I’d listen to her music, make her listen to mine. I would jus love to exist with her from time to time, laying around just a little bit lazy… I would love to be her pillow.

Mirror--a prose poem

Mirror. Why, mirror, are you in here? To tease me out of my clothes. You’re feasting on me, aren’t you? You’re reflecting eye on my dappled thighs and you can’t resist me. Do you? Shall I? Coy little square, my… what sharp corners you have—the better to reflect you my dear. And the lights are turned low to hide what I can and I frame myself sleek silver shines lined with the parts I do not care for. You minx, you wall dwelling vixen. You are, exclusively mine, until someone walks behind me.

Fruit and Vegitable Baby--a dream

I had a dream. I was in a bath tub with my lover. “I’ve just given birth, so you have to be nice to me!” I told our visitor in the bathroom. I stood for the bathroom stall, where blood was expelled, and emerged. I walked down the Hagg-Saur hall, bright with sun light and held the melon head, green stripped and heavy. The orange of the pelvis and the orange of the torso would not stay together, “He’s dying!” I realized I’d forgotten to peel the oranges, how could I expect him to stay together with the peels in the way? I was terrified my lover, now husband would find out I was letting our child die. I began to peel, and the other parts loosened, the carrot fingers, corn cob legs… I had to peel faster. I peeled away too much though, and the abdomen couldn’t heal. I cried and realized the suffering. I was putting it in pain, for my self. I was selfish. I’d put it out of its misery; I tossed it into a trashcan, suddenly just dead fruit. I had failed, I couldn’t make it live… I didn’t know it would be so hard. My love would be too upset… so I fetched his mother. I found my own mother too, then my dead aunt, and my dear sister came with. We found some bushes in the court yard. I sat them all down and joined their warm circle. I looked at them all and said, “Okay, how do you keep your children from falling apart?”

Soldier--a poem

We had an apartment-
We only existed outside of those walls for classes
Or to be the cold breathes outside
Of the country kitchen
The gas station
Wal-Mart.
“Whaley Whale” You called yourself…
I was the Star-Fishy-Fishy.

You used to scoop me up so tall and spin our love in the kitchen.
Me so high on your chest, “Touch the light!” you’d say, and I would, and we’d kiss.
Was it really you there? Twirling and laughing?
I was so happy to
Forget
Who you could be
When the light in your eyes went
Out.

The night you found his car,
The night you found me stripped,
I had already said I wasn’t yours
But you hadn’t let go--
We didn’t see eye to eye.
I thought he would die by your hands.
I told him to run, drive-
But in his car
I’d lost your ring
And forgotten my shoes.
I walked into lake Bemidji
I though I might have drowned.

I never knew until the end
About the cigarillos—
Never even knew you smoked
We’d been together an entire year and
I never knew until last night
how much you, lie,
and it was your new ex-girlfriend’s lips, that let it slip.

You didn’t believe in whom I could be on my own
But I still have both of my feet
Underneath me
and shoed.
You told me I needed you
But I am stronger than that.
I am

It’s been almost one year
Since that night, and the lake, and the
Tears—ashamed that they were mine.
You’ve given up Da Vinci
You’ve abandoned your brushes, those precise pens
And thick pencils.
I remember when you’d bought them
They were new
You were excited.

Your inky hands are too white
Now, too clean
Your two faces will never look the same
Without your long hair or
without your hair at all.

Now,
You’ve spent so many months hating me,
Loving her.
She was, for a time,
your new Captor.
But she left you too—
When you shaved your head
Took away her CDs and told her
“You’re moving on base,
I’m joining the military.”
And you joined the military
Just like Kurt
Who hits your mother
Just like Kurt
Who pushed you around
Just like Kurt, the man
You swore you always hated.
And anything left of the good I knew is
Now very,
Very gone.

Falling From Bright to Brown--a poem

I used to be brighter than candy, even when I wasn’t sweet
I used to be the color of neon and rainbow.

I used to be colors—the ones in the upper right
Of your computer paint spectrum box.

I used to be cans of fizz. I was caffeinated
saturated with soda: I didn’t know flat.

My heart didn’t know ground: I put on his ice skates and launched
Into the cold sky with my woven scarf.

I was a super hero, I was unstoppable.
I rode the clouds. I, was unstoppable.

I was hot pink and I was confusable.
My voice rose louder than those skates, those clouds, ever took me.

I was one of the stars. I was burning bright and fast.
I was on a race to somewhere, with a someone I’d call rocket fuel.

But he burnt up my blades and I was lost back to the stratus
While he raced on Looping back for me but never slowing down.

My heart found the ground the same time as my ass.
Now I’ve found ponds and I skirt around their lost reeds.

Sometimes I even scoot in brown tennis shoes
Through the towns and the forests.

I’ve found a someone lost in the wood grain
And he is like the rain; falling with me from the sky.

Mamory Memories

..or, The Dangers of Chasing Pencils

In second grade Ashley Armento wore training bras. She showed me hers when I stayed over. She said she wouldn’t be friends with any girl who wouldn’t wear a training bra because they were gross, even though neither of us were developing. The next evening back at home I asked my mom to buy training bras for me, and she refused. The next time Ashley and I hung out I tried to pass off one of my shorter spaghetti tops as a bra but she said it didn’t count. Ashley and I didn’t stay friends long.

My breast started growing in the middle of fourth grade; painful bottle caps of tissue under my skin. I would try to catch my pencil as it went to roll off the far end of my desk and bash my chest against the edge of the desk, shuddering in pain, hating my pencil, and boobs.

My breasts gave up growing for another year after that. There’s a picture of me from the summer after sixth grade sitting on the curb next to a boy. I was at a parade and the boy was Jeff Scott—I think I scared him. That was the first and last time we hung out. In the picture there’s already a shadow of cleavage creeping up from under my tank top. I think I was already at a size B that summer when I finally decided to go off of sports bras and start into the form fitting ones.

I’ve always hated the feeling of cold breast, the nipple puckering like a clot of goose bumps, and poking out—sticking out and the way that people stare like it’s unnatural, dirty or sexual. My breasts have never felt less sexual than when they were cold. I was in tenth grade at my public high school, walking the rounded halls lined with blue and orange and red and yellow lockers. I was going to the library in the center of the buildings circles. It was chilly out that day. I’d dropped my coat in my locker, and had my hoodie on, unzipped over a shirt. There was a girl who had spit gum into my hair when I was in the seventh grade, she strut passed with her boyfriend. She looked at me, and turned to her bleach blond Abercrombie boy and said “It must be cold in here, maybe some of us should put on a jacket.” I’m sure I spat some phrase back at the girl before strutting into the library only to sit down at a table and zip the sweatshirt up. I was horribly embarrassed. After that I started buying thicker bras, so that no one would be able to tell. I never bought a soft cup again, until last year when my mom brought home three for me she’d gotten cheap. I wear them on occasion-too broke to buy new ones on my own… but I always wear a dark colored shirt with those, and if I’m going out, I dress extra warm.

The day I turned eighteen my friend and I wandered the Arts High campus taking birthday donations to go to Saint Sabrina’s. We left the dorms in her powder blue jeep and arrived at the piercing parlor and purgatory. I went up stares, filled out the forms, gave them the fifty dollars and went into the back room. A warm and friendly man with gauged nostrils, and scarification tattoos above his eyebrows carefully drew the small dots on either side of my nipple. “It’s crooked looking” I said. He redrew them, then laid me down. He gripped my nipple tightly in the clamps, lining its holes up with both of my drawn on dots. He took the ten gauge hollow needle, had me breath in, then the moment I couldn’t hold my breath any longer, palms sweating, eyes closed, I exhaled and the needle went though swiftly. He threaded the jewelry in seamlessly after the needle, clipped in the ball to the hoop, and I went back to the dorms with a little bit of kleenex tissue tucked into my bra for the blood.

My eleven and twelfth grade years were the prime time for my breasts. My theatre class flashed each other many times, frequently hanging out naked around each other’s rooms if not streaking around the campus, or skinny dipping, or nipple comparing. By the end of senior year we each had our nipple doppelgangers picked out. I think Sarah K was mine; we were both pierced pink and similarly shaped. None of us found this the least bit unusual at the time, after all: They were just boobs, and a boob was a boob was a boob.

My breasts have brought me a lot of interesting experiences in life. They’ve been made into art work, drawn on, photographed, pierced, touched, hit, and have commonly been an annoyance. They’ve nearly ruined my posture and have always been a concern of self image. They’ve been fawned upon and been made fun of. Sometimes I wish they were smaller, some days I think they’re not big enough, or round enough. They’re heavy tear drops, rounded, but not round.

When I’m naked and alone, sometimes I’ll lay on my back, bored, tired or frustrated. I’ll prop my head on my cloud pillow, place a hand to the outer side of one of my breasts and pat it quickly, watching it water bed back and fourth, sloshing inside my skin. “Heh, boobs,” I’ll mutter, eventually rolling over to keep them warm. Neither one is pierced now. I took the piercing out fifteen months or so after I’d gotten it. Don’t get me wrong, I do like breasts, particularly the fact that I have them, but, they still get in the way of lifting heavy things.

Mosaic--an essay

What makes a person? The assembly of abstract and concrete, of psyche and biology? What proof of self is it that we’re after in life? Recognition, in the end, seems to be what every one’s after: an imprint to leave behind or even just a memory to be. I assume the reason people want this so badly is because, like me, they doubt that they are- that they exist.

Some times I think I might not be real. I suppose that I must be some sort of collection of my favorite parts of people; after all, does anyone else wonder what it’s like to be someone else? I feel as though I am that person, that someone else that happens as a fragment, a flicker, when one pretends too long. Yet, that leaves me to wonder,
“What sort of mosaic of broken bits am I to have become something tangible—hold-able?”

***
“Have you ever slept in a baseball field? That’s a particular sort of bed,” Kasandra says.
“No, I’ve slept in a playing field. Not a sports playing field but a field next to a playground. The kind where, I’m sure they play sports, but that’s not all it’s meant for,” I say, stumbling over my thoughts. My hands are covered with dirt, and we’ve been supposing outside all evening. “You’ve never slept in that house!” I tell her, and she says she’s never considered it. “We should knock, and ask to come in, when they ask why, we’ll say ‘Because we never have before.’” Then we arrive home.
“What ridiculous people we are,” I say.
“No we’re not! That conversation was amazing. It was a particular sort of conversation! The very sort of conversations we should have if we’re going to be particular people, which we are! It’s a particular subject.” We laugh, and her books, stacked in three tall stacks on our carpet, tumble down as she frees her copy of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. “Ah, here it is!” she cries, “the scandal of particularity!” I am quoted to, too long to record here, and we move on. “Oh Annie Dillard,” she sighs, restacking five or so of her books. “I think I’ll make tea, yes, I know I will.” The books are abandoned and she rushes to the kitchen to return with my kettle in hand, “I already have,” she speaks quietly to no one in particular, and freshens her room temperature cup, which to me, looks like a flower vase too wide to be so short; no taller than the width of Kasandra’s hand. “Egyptian chamomile,” she says, “Egyptian flowers, right here, in my tea cup.”

***
I revisited my tree. This past full moon I stood, swaying, singing, and dancing under the moon on the Indian trail along the lake. Kasandra and Zach were with, and after bouts of “L-O-V-E” and “That’s Amore”, Kasandra and I collapsed, drunk with moonshine, against a tree. It was the first time I’d ever felt right hugging a tree. The feeling was in its smell and the way my fingers tucked into the gaps of its bark. I guess it’s my tree now; it’s its own tree as well.

***
I sat last night, in a room watching a girl and her harp—a girl and her guitar—a girl and her ukulele. Her name is Shannon and when she plays music, people listen, and when she plays music in places like that theatre last night, people buy her CDs. What a god awful fool I feel for looking at her and thinking how cute she is, nervously slipping over lyrics and jumping over verses. Her feet hop and step and stomp with her political strums and unhappy love song shorts. I looked at her shadow and her reflection in a dark window and saw her hook of a pony tail, so smooth and small saying “I’m small, but I’m bound strong.” She winked at me when I mentioned oatmeal; I hope I didn’t blush. Oh, what a god awful fool I feel for having a crush on a lady like this, when I’m sure were I to say such a thing to her, “Shannon, I have a crush on you,” she’d thank me politely and think disappointedly to herself “Oh how many times I’ve heard that one before!” I do not know her well, for if I did I’d likely have no crush at all, because when someone is platonic too long, I fizzle softly into friendship, but for now I sneak to her website with as much shame as if I were sneaking to her window, to try to see who she might be when she’s alone.

***
Who do you become when you’re alone? So much of who someone is, is made up of who they are to other people and how they are with other people. When I’m alone, I like to be in my bed. I like dirty flannel sheets that are all me and a selection of blankets all for me to choose, and no one to take my favorite stuffed animals. But in the morning I hate waking up alone, and in the evening I hate to lay alone. I guess I should nap in the day to stay up late and wake up after ten thirty each morning, because then I will never need someone to confirm my solid presence. One must be weak, or spoiled to think the familiar rub of pilling sheets is not enough to say, “Yes, Greta, you’re here.”

***
I like the looks of clocks, but not the bird ones where the bird picture where the hour hand strikes makes the noises. Those pictures; with their bird’s tails, pointing any which way they please! Those tail feathers always throw me off. Just what time is it anyway; and why should something like time matter anyhow?

***
There are certain things that I can cook, I can make a nice tomato based jambalaya with Italian sausage and salad shrimp. If I’m feeling vegan I know a West Indian red beans on coconut rice dish, which is pretty much kidney beans with spices in tomato sauce on top of rice boiled in coconut milk. I can make some mean mashed potatoes, and hard boil eggs. I bake too, mostly cookies. Once, with Kasandra, I baked a cake from scratch, and we put in honey, cinnamon and vanilla for flavor. I set the oven temperature wrong though and it came out sort of like a big fluffy cookie.

It is yet to be determined whether or not pancakes are cooking or baking.
I can make just about anything if there are directions that don’t require expensive equipment. I’m happy with my copper bottom pot and cast iron pan. I’d like to buy a whisk and a can opener. My mother sent me a potato masher last Christmas, it was in my stocking; I was very happy.

***
I cry too much. Are my feelings genuine? After spending years pretending to be other people, in plays or in fiction, I’m sure my edges must be blurring. There is one person who knows every side of me. Even she has trouble seeing me sometimes. I don’t mind feeling out of focus, what I dislike is never feeling solid.

***
Kasandra has a charming shyness about her in certain situations. She has an appreciation for the gorgeousness of simple things and important things. She revels in single sentences from novels. I appreciated that aspect of her, and took it into myself. I stop to appreciate the shape of my tea pot more often, and played with her in the dirt, making a mountain on her knee. It cracked in half at one point, she said it must have had a fault line, and we repaired it. When it happened again she said, “It must have been it’s time,” and we leaned against my tree. We went home and checked for ticks, and I washed my hands.

***
What is it like to be someone else? I spend more time wondering what it’s like to be me. Sometimes I think about being a specific person I know; that would be lovely. But if anyone ever supposed what it was like to be me or many people at once, I guess this must be it. I like skirts, I like dresses, and I like heavy jeans and thick sweaters. I write my characters into these clothes often. I write them into the sun, and on adventures, I write them right into love and back out. I write them into small knit hats and around fires. These are things inside me somewhere. Can I ever write a character that isn’t inside me? Maybe there’s no one that isn’t in me. Culture has made me who I am, and in travel I’m sure I could be anyone anywhere whether I was happy about it or not. This is something amazing if it is true, but no matter how amazing something is, that does not stop it from being horrible.

***
“Go ahead minnows, have my dead skin,” Zach says to the water’s surface and I wonder if they can hear him. They seem to like his feet more than mine, so I scoot my toes left, and on top of his, in hopes of being nibbled myself. We sit giggling at the tickles of their little mouths, the water waving around our calves. The sun is getting lower, and the dock feels wooden and warm around the edges of my mother’s old bathing suit; it fits me like a worn out glove.

His hair is as golden as ever. He takes his feet from the lake and the small fish scatter, reforming quickly at all ten of my toes. I think to myself that I’m definitely doing some good here, even if it’s nothing more than feeding fish. Zach and I smile wide, and we look at one another briefly through our windy wet hair. I look back to the shallow sandy lake floor. I swish my feet against the tickles of minnow mouths and the water stirs up suddenly cold; it’s time to take my feet out. I stand up, dragging the sail-boat towel from my back, drying around my ankles and see the wet print of my butt on the sun bleached wood. It stop to think, deciding that it can be concluded that I’m at least as real as my soggy butt print, and if it’s real enough to make Zach laugh the way he is, the late summer sun slung low, his hair and towel, and dripping legs all agreeing with his elation… well, if I’m real enough for him, then I’m real enough for me.

Sparkles and Splashing Puddles--an essay

I am fire works and gold mines. The primary colors and busy umbrellas. I am wispy pony tails and wistful eyes. I am training bras, braces, back packs and panty liners.

I am a girl grown too big for her little britches. My favorite old dress, with Ragedy Ann on the front, which I tried so hard not to grow out of, or ruin, still sits safety pinned and dirty in the back of my closet. The day my shoulders wouldn’t fit, in the third grade, was the day I began to fear growing up. The day I turned twenty, sitting at midnight in a friends car, was the day I learned I never have to.

I am squeaking wood floors, and squeaky wet shoes, squeaky clean records, and a dirty mind. I am cotton, and fabric, and imperfect stitching. I am tea with sugar, honey and little spoons.

I am years old lipstick and milk white tights. I am thighs and blood, Cheeks and smiles. Pearls, paper, pens, saddle shoes, shopping lists, and empty calendars. Maybe a mechanical pencil or the occasional poorly knit mitten.

I am a woman in the strangest of ways; An excerpt from the 1950’s with aprons and cast iron frying pans. I follow when I dance. I’ve saved up to buy a vacuum cleaner of my own. I was excited to finally buy it. I paint my face and wear perfume. Some days I crumble away into big shirts and old jeans then blossom into sweaters, blouses and bright skirts. I thought I was a woman the day I got my period, then again the first time I made love. Now I wonder will it come when I marry? When I am first with child? But underneath this doormat, where both mud and greetings lay, I’ve been a woman all along.

I am a lover too impatient to be loved. However, I am loved mysteriously and finely. I need to love, to hold and breath as one, and so I do. The girlfriend the family loves more than their son does, or the girl his family pretends does not exist. I wear my hair up, move the hips, take the showers and often wear his clothes. I would sweep his floor and make his bed, scrub his bathroom and cook his food, if he would make what was his ours. I am not a wife but I would like to be a bride.

I am old carpet thread inherited down from my mothers sewing box to mine, still far from running out. I am army green buttons and antique kettles.

I am a mother to young to mother my own. I can feel the fertility washing over me in cycles with the moon, and know the waxing and waning of my desires for a child. Each new moon finds me happily wasting time. Each full moon finds me wishing for a family, and wanting to grow wide like that silver sphere herself; warm bellied, sturdy standing, the world’s precious commodity. My baby’s hope and home and future. Like the port from which they shall sail. But still, I have no such child.

I am thick glasses and leg warmers. I am deep green carpets and coffee colored walls. I am songs sung so many times that the lyrics wear thin. I am the old picture of the three brothers, like one man, in stages of succession to becoming their father.

I am misplaced and re-found. I have lost my religion, and lost my faith in man kind. Half of my soul has been eaten by impatient men masquerading as lovers. Women aren’t half better. I have loved the female form, the woman’s eyes, hair, smells and impossibly soft skin. Like her life force was something intangible, simply as a woman. So quickly could I forget She and I were women both, and give over every wile I ever had to such a beautiful creature, and even more beautiful a person. She took her own bites out of who I was, and left me just as torn.

I am a girl, a child, and that will never change: I will always need my mommy, and shuffle my feet. I will whine when I’m hurt, and think homework is dumb. I share my body as a woman: full breasted, round hipped, and in a pile of clichés. I am a fierce lover: One doesn’t need to be Betty Page to wear black, nor does one need marriage to blissfully cry in love and for love as I have. I am a heathen: I have loved before marriage, even unto female flesh. I have forsaken your saviors. Regardless, I have found peace, beauty, honesty, and good will. I have learned I don’t need a reason to be good, or kind. I just need the time to do it. I am misplaced money, changing leaves, and nice socks; the kind you wear as soon as they’ve been washed. On a weekend I am pillows, and blankets, sun spilling window frames, and pancakes.

Were a pail set outside on the planet in the valley where emotions are made, and the droplets sprinkled down contaminated like acid rain, raught with intermingling and undecided feelings, filling up that tin bucket, then I would be this bucket too. One knows a human is filled with the possiblitites of each individual emotions. Like a master of the elixirs, I have over 3,256 flavors. As the base flavor, when bottled, my ingredients read clearly; Exasperation, Intimacy, Joy, Skepticism (as a preservative), Hope, Sadness, Melancholy, Anger, Attachment (for consistency). Not an ounce of High Fructose Corn Syrup.

I am so many names that not one seems to fit, and I am a series of logical contradiction. I am punnant squares and ven-diagrams expressing the important science of naming color crayons, and where my gene for “eccentric” really came form. I am my tattoo’s, chosen life scars my mother hates. I am I am everything, like the world. I am nothing, like a list that does not exist. I have also said “I am” about 27 times in this essay so far. I guess I am repetitive as well.

Plaid

And what is a better busy print for an umbrella than plaid?
Snow flakes
stripes
and dots
lace and frills like rain coat dresses reaching over wires like a canvas over wood.
Staple guns are the enemy.