Blue Bird

What does it sound like, when the bird stops singing?

A silent looming cloud

A gentle gleaming crowd

Of watching eyes

And painful sighs

For all the sounds of forgotten times

From up above, the birds on strike

Will hold their breath and wait

Not a note from one windpipe

Will ring for us to take

To mush and meld and bend and break

We ruin all the sound

The simple chirp from a chickadee,

The sound from when I wake

We take these notes, and make our songs

All of you the same

The notes from birds

Sung for years

Copy written tears

We pay for music, that’s all around us

Babbling brooks and streams

The little things you seem to miss

When days are filled with dreams

But dream of this when sounds are gone

And all you have is noise

A silent world, with no more love

From a bluebird, jay or dove.

For you

I watch you fall

And I’m sorry.

I want to be that someone you lean on

That person you seek when tears leak from your eyes

Like pipes in a forgotten home

Like rain in a rusty gutter

Pouring from red eyes, covering your body.

My shoulders are bending

The weight from your decisions

I want to be that person

Holding up the world

Not bending and breaking

Like that old forgotten bridge

With ivy on my skin

Creeping up my body, covering my face.

Would you smile if you saw me?

Falling away at the seems

Would you laugh if I laid down?

And let the ivy spread on the ground

Over the feet of too many people

I capture them in my trap

My trap

I hold them like flies

I want to be that person

You love

I want to be that person

In my fly trap

Caught in my ivy

Metal

Metal, cold against my skin

Onto this cold lifeless metal

I hold, afraid I’ll fall away.

Drifting through purple sky’s

With green grass below

And rainbow wings to fly

As this cold metal pulls me down

Stretching my body

Flat and shiny I become cold and lifeless

I break away from the metal

At last I reform

My body loosens

Becoming warm

Realizing to late; without my metal I fall faster.

Gaining speed I cling to purple sky

Grasp as dissolving rainbow wings

And smash like glass on the warm and wet grass

I am powder now

Swept up in the wind,

To land on cold shiny metal.

Light

My eyes flutter open,

The sun peers down at me

I close them.

I feel the warmth prying

Seeping through my eyes lashes

Every second I struggle with this

Mounting

Ominous

Feeling

No matter where I run,

My skin will be touched

By light.

Hate

I hate the way you hold yourself

Like the world is pinning you down

Like every step you take

With your black shoes

Is a step too far

I hate the way you hold things

Like they mean more than me

Like the fragile necessities are your drugs

Your anti-depressant

Your life line to a “happier you”

I hate the way you say “that’s excellent”

When you mean you don’t care

Like when I dance in circles around you
Curtsying, jumping, out of breath

Exhausted

Only to find you weren’t watching.

Invisible.

Tides

“Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels caused by the combined effects of the gravitational forces exerted by the Moon and the Sun and the rotation of the Earth.”

            “Nana, are you ready?” I say this quietly so I wont startle her and bend down so she knows I am talking to her.

            “I guess so,” she mumbles in a defeated unenthused voice, I know exactly how she feels. I bend down farther and gently place my hands on each side of her tiny waist. She doesn’t look up at me; she just hangs her head and waits.

            “One, two, three,” I say loudly this time and hoist her out of the wooden rocking chair, it takes a few lonely swings back and forth as though trying to convince her to sit back down. I hold on to her arm, a support for both of us. My mom hurries out onto the porch, my grandpa in tow.

            “Stay close to Poppy,” I feel my mom’s breath warm and frenzied on my ear as she whispers his to me. I walk slowly over to stand next to my grandpa picking up a glass of water to make my change in position look casual.

              “While tides are usually the largest source of short-term sea-level fluctuations, sea-levels are also subject to forces such as wind and barometric pressure changes resulting in storm surges, especially in shallow sea and near coasts.”

            My mom takes my grandma’s arm and begins leading he down the steep narrow stairs. Next goes my grandpa, and I follow behind him, never touching. He hobbles down each step slowly and when he reaches the bottom, he bends down to rest his withered hands on his knees and catch his breath. His breathing comes in long gasps and he waits a while before straightening up again. He turns to my grandma and says lightly “You ready?”

            She replies with a nod, and we all start to walk again in the same order, my mom and her mothering front followed by my grandpa and finally, me.

            “The sun exerts a less powerful gravitational attraction on the Earth, which results in a secondary tidal effect. When the Earth, Moon and Sun are approximately   aligned these two tidal effects reinforce one another (resulting in higher highs and lower lows).

            Were sitting on the wooden boardwalk now, waiting for my grandparents to catch their breath and rest. They sit side by side in big wooden chairs that have been there forever. My mom pulls out a bottle of sunscreen and begins to apply it liberally to her mother’s face.

            “You missed some spots,” I say, trying not to laugh because I’m not sure if it’s funny. She looks around and sees that I’m right; there are globs un-rubbed-in sunscreen all over her thin wrinkled skin.

“You look like a ghost, mom,” she laughs and in a moment of complete realness and presence, my grandma turns to her husband of 54 years and says “Boo!”

            He looks at her for a moment, and then begins to laugh heartily. We all laugh for what seems like forever, and then it’s over.

            “On the opposite side of the Earth, the water is at it’s farthest from the moon, so it is pulled less; at this point, the Earth moves more toward the Moon than the water does, causing that water to rise as well.

            “Did we already go for a walk?”

            “No dad, we were just about to,” my mom answers him with tired enthusiasm. We all start to get up and move in the same procession towards the steps down to the beach.

            My mom walks my grandma down to the sand first, and for a moment she stumbles and I feel helpless. She manages to get her balance back and stands to the side so my grandpa can make his way down. I hold my breath as I walk behind him, flinching every time he looks unstable. He makes it down and my mom and I both let our breath out simultaneously.

            They walk along the beach at a slow pace, my mom and her parents. I walk behind them, just in case.

Obsessions

You know that stuff on the end of the pencil, right after you sharpen it?

 That prickly wooden fuzz, that disgusting stabbing ick.

 Know that stuff? I hate it.

 I hate the way it rubs along my fingers as I try to write my essays.

 I hate the way it crunches drily into the cracks of my fingers.

You know how when you’re walking down the sidewalk

And you step on a crack you just have to step on another on?

And not just step on it; plant your opposite foot, in the same place,

On the next crack.

I hate the way it never works, the way your brain is screaming

Not right, not right, not right!

I hate that I am forced to waddle down he sidewalk like an
asylum escapee,

Tripping over myself.

Crack, crack crack!

            You know when you have that favorite number

And if things aren’t done in multiples of it,

Your skin crawls right off your body? I Hate that.

I hate the way I press the skip button three times on my iPod

And have to press it again, even if I want to listen to that song.

How my boyfriend knows to kiss me four times if it’s more than one,

And eight if it’s more that four.

You know when your windshield wipers are going

And you can’t turn them off

Because there’s that one drop of water,

Stuck to the window?

I hate how I drive under a tree

And that one drop of water splashes

And explodes then gathers itself up again

Into a giant bubble of annoyance.

You know when you can’t sleep

Because the blankets aren’t perfect

And you twitch and turn

And flip and flop

And nothing ever works?

I hate that.

I hate how I end up throwing them off of me,

Falling asleep with my eyes stinging, shivering.

You know how when your OCD fires up

Everything is twice as hard?

Wait. You don’t’?

The Only Thing

The only thing that I would do,

Is change myself a little.

A little braver,

A little stronger,

A little more like you.

A little smarter,

A little kinder,

Only a little of each will do.

A little cuter,

A little happier,

Whatever you can spare.

Please somebody, who ever is listening

Take a chance to dare.

Give me one or two of these,

And I’ll live on quite well.

Give me something to make me better,

But promise not to tell.

The shame of what I have become,

Lacking what I need,

Is far too much for me to bear,

So look down and hear me plead.

But, why not change ALL of me,

For someone I can’t see.

When everyday I send along,

This one unanswered plea.

I do not care to be

More brave, strong, smart, or kind.

For everyone who cannot see me,

Certainly is blind.

For I am all these things I want,

Without having to kneel.

Beyond the ringing bells and books,

I have not struck a deal

With any higher power yet,

For I am satisfied.

I’ll take my time and live my life

And at the end, may have cried.

But at least for now I can say,

I’ve lived my life for me,

I’ve done what I can truly love

And not for someone,

I can’t see. 

Mind That Does Not Stick

 “Mind that does not stick.”

                                                       —Zen Master Shoitsu

The thought that first comes to my mind is the amount of literal stickiness that a mind can physically possess: this can’t be right. There’s got to be some deeper, more physiological meaning to this. But I can’t think of any. Possibly it’s referring to when I’m sitting in geometry class and Mrs. Hoyt is explaining the Pythagorean Theorem, and it just will not stick. Maybe it’s when I’m still learning times tables in my junior year.

Perhaps, stickiness is not measured in how sticky it is, but in how much sticky substance there is. Possibly it’s referring to how I need to be taught the difference between obtuse, right and acute over and over and over again. Maybe it’s just that my mind does not stick to math problems. Perhaps my mind is the not-so-sticky one.

For as long as I can remember, I have been special, and not in the good way. In first grade I can remember being pulled off to the side when we did addition and subtraction problems, being told, “You’ll get it” over and over and over again. My teacher would sit with me and repeat again and again how to line up my numbers and add them. I would stare blankly off into space and imagine storylines. I would gather up all these characters in my head, and without knowing it, find antagonists and protagonists and make an entire cast. I would set them in their places, dragging them from one side of my mind to the other and begin to imagine. This all done while my teacher turned red in the face and spluttered on about carrying the ones. I didn’t care to carry my ones; I had a movie playing in my head, tuning her out.

When I was around seven years old, my parents thought I was old enough to visit my grandparents in upstate New York for a week, alone. One night my grandma was talking on the phone with my mom and said “Zoë is so easy, she can entertain herself doing anything!” My mom said, “yes, Zoë has a very rapid imagination.” The reason why I was such a blessing to my elderly grandparents was because I would plop myself down in any room of their house and use anything available to make stories. They had lots of toys, but none of them were people. They had a big bucket of cars, a plastic barn complete with all types of animals and hundreds of playing cards. I would build houses out of the cards, make the cars people, and the animals were pets. I named all my characters and assessed them by type of car (model and year) then gave them a basic personality, which could fluctuate depending on what I needed them to do. I remember distinctly a sparkly purple sports car that looked relatively new, I named her Sparkle. She was outgoing and very pretty; her boyfriend was a monster truck from a McDonald’s Happy Meal. He was gruff and mean, and eventually, Sparkle left him for an older fire truck who was timid and shy.

It was only at night that this ability to create the make-believe became a problem. My grandparents slept downstairs, and I was supposed to sleep upstairs, all by myself. My imagination got the better of me every night I sat up, terrified, staring out into the dark. After a week of quiet afternoons and horrifying nights, I went back home and summer ended.

Back at school, my teachers still tried to make math stick in my mind. I went to different rooms and had aides help me with all my work. I remember in fourth grade being put in a group with another girl to practice multiplication facts and realizing for the first time that I was different. This girl was some kind of prodigy, I was sure, because she whipped through the flash cards when I tested her, barely catching her breath before each answer. She conquered the twos then the threes and before I knew it she was yelping out the answers to the nines. We finished up with nine times nine and she said eighty-one without drop of hesitation. When it was my turn, I oozed hesitation from every orifice. I stumbled blindly through my twos, got caught up on my threes and fell flat on my face on my four. I didn’t even make it to the nines and I was told by my teacher to go home and practice. Though practice I did, those darned multiplication facts continued to evade me.

When I got to middle school things only got worse. By the time I got to seventh grade, I had to go to a separate room to do math. There were only six students in this class and it continued into my eighth-grade year. My teacher would look at me exasperatedly as I fumbled through graphs and word problems, waiting for me to “just get it, already.” But sadly for her, that day never came. She would say “Zoë, pay attention and explain how much money Pablo will have at the end of a month if he gets one ruble the first day, two rubles the second day and so on by using exponential reasoning.”

I didn’t know what exponential reasoning was or why it mattered. I was pretty sure if Pablo wanted to know how much money he was going to make, he should wait till the end of the month and count it himself. And rubles? We aren’t in Russia, and for that matter Pablo is not even a Russian name! The entire story line was confusing and, in the end, hopeless. I stared at her while I thought this all over. I had come to a pretty solid conclusion, and I was sure she would see my side of it. She did not. When I was done explaining the ridiculousness of the scenario--and the entire class was laughing (yes, all six of them) -- she sent me out to sit in yet another room, this time all by myself. I knew what I had done wrong, but I wasn’t trying to be a nuisance; that was the only way I could answer the question. I stayed in the other room for the rest of the block, receiving one-on-one help until I understood.

One Christmas I didn’t have any money to buy my mom a present. I decided I was going to write her a book. This was ambitious as I was only about ten at the time. I sat down with my pad of yellow paper and a number-two pencil. I wrote a harrowing tale of a young girl living with her evil parents who didn’t love her and smoked lots of cigarettes. It was one page. This was the complete opposite of my mom and dad, and I must have realized that it would have been offensive to give it to her. I gave my mom a card that year with some little Job Lot trinket that I can’t remember.

 I was always writing things when I was younger. When I was in first grade, I wrote a short story about a princess who lived under her tyrant of a father and longed to escape with her prince. One night, she ran away and I explained, in surprising detail for a six year old, her journey through the kingdom and out onto the grounds. But for some reason, my most memorable experiences of that year are of not understanding math.

“Mind that does not stick”

I think that all minds are built differently and out of different material. Some are Velcro, with all the mathematical information that is thrown at them sticking instantly; others are made of sponge, absorbing everything that comes into contact with them.  Mine is neither of these. My mind is a pool of things where I can drop in certain facts and swirl them together into something that makes sense to me, my mind does not necessarily “stick” but instead “creates”.  

Thankful

I am thankful for everything that makes me who I am. I am thankful for the place I grew up, Peterborough. The way growing up in a small town shapes morals more than a big city. The way everyone knows everything about everyone, even the things they don’t know. How when tragedy strikes, the whole world really does stand still for a moment in a small town. The way the hills roll in with orange and yellow and red when things are changing. The way the snow whips up all of our emotions and buries them for the winter until they thaw in the spring. I am thankful that the seasons mark the changes, because without this symbol of time, things would drag by. 

I am thankful for the summer, and how after a long cold winter it bursts upon us as though it had never gone. The way the heat blazes my shoulders as I run from my air-conditioned home to the air-conditioned car. The way my feet scream as I hop up and down on the hot pavement from parking lot to beach. In summer, I’m always going from one place to another. In winter, I stand still.

 I am thankful for the peace the snow brings, covering dirt and pollution under a blanket of tranquility. The way I can curl up underneath a fleece blanket and just breathe. How no matter what I do, my footprints will always show up in a bed of dirtied snow. The way all the white seems soothing after the intense array of sun colors.

I am thankful for fall because it is the forgetful season. For the way the bird’s song sings softer, until it suddenly vanishes and I forget that the silence is unusual. The way I am weaned off the heat and sun, slowly, until I don’t remember it was ever there.

I am thankful for Adams Playground, PES, Cunningham Pond, my back yard and all my memories as a tot. The way my mom gardened in the sun, and as I ran by would toss me a cherry tomato wrapped in basil. I am thankful for the sweet juice exploding in my mouth as the basil crunched and emitted a sweet and familiar taste. I am thankful for the bucket of about two hundred golf balls my sisters would scatter about the yard in all of our secret hiding places, telling me, the child in our game of house, to “Go collect the eggs, Zoë!” I am thankful for the time my sister, my dad and I took Margaret, our puppy, to the pond to swim and she was so scared she clawed me and I nearly sank right down to the murky bottom.  I am thankful for the big yellow slide and the tire swings that were eventually ruled “unsafe.” I am thankful that my childhood was not child-proofed and that I got bruises and ate wild mushrooms in the woods and got my stomach pumped. I am thankful because I got hurt, and when it was over the doctor gave me juice.

            I am thankful for violin lessons, singing lessons and dance lessons. For the way the bow glides across the strings and lets out a screeching wail when you haven’t practiced. For the way my voice cracked and I kept on singing until it was trained to hold that high note perfectly. For the way I shone on stage at my recitals, feeling every step coming together in a beautiful string of choreography. I am thankful for the time I sang “The Tigger Song” with my best friend in front of over twenty strangers, accompanied by dance moves and many giggles. Continually peeking down at my wrist where I had scribbled, “They’re bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy fun, fun, fun, fun, FUN! But the most wonderful thing about Tiggers is I'm the only one”

            I am thankful for the tree house my dad built us, complete with trap door, hand-made ladder, screened-in windows and an American flag. The way we proclaimed it our “Secret Club House” for about a week, and the way I was included in this game. How we had to pay dues, but I was the only one who paid, being the youngest of two sisters. How when the game was over, I was once again taboo and would be left alone in the tree-house, too afraid of heights to clamber down the rickety swinging ladder. I am thankful for my dad, who came to rescue me, wondering aloud why I had climbed up there in the first place. To be included.