Tonight I’m gonna dance (for all that we’ve been through)

We’re fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.
//Japanese Proverb

---

There are a lot of ways that her little sister is different now. And most of the differences aren’t good or bad – they just simply are.

But one thing she does notice that bothers her is that her little sister never dances any more. And it’s not even that her sister was the best dancer or that it was some sort of great ambition of hers, but it’s just that she had so much fun doing it. She was always the first one on the dance floor at weddings, at birthday parties, at clubs, and seedy bars. Hell, she didn’t even need a dance floor a lot of the time. She fondly remembers (fondly now, of course; at the time it had been highly annoying) being dragged out of her bedroom after going to battle with her obstinate senior thesis and being forced to take a dance break.

“C’mooooon!” Lydia would cry, flailing her 20 year old body around wildly to some godawful dance remix. “This is good for you! Loosens up the body, gets the blood flowing!”

Of course she would roll her eyes, but her sister would continue on, undeterred, until finally it was the two of them sliding down the hall, waving their arms, singing loudly to a Taylor Swift dance remix.

But now she sits at the lavishly though tastefully decorated table and watches her now 22 year old sister smile and shake her head when their cousins plead with her to come out and dance with them. She realizes with a start that she hasn’t seen Lydia dance at any of the three weddings they’ve attended in the past year. She had noticed before then that her sister no longer danced at bars or clubs, but since she’d never been a fan of those places either way, had chalked it up to her baby sister just growing out of the bar scene.

Now she wonders if her little sister’s penchant for dancing was one of the things lost in last year’s betrayal and heartbreak. They had never been the closest among the siblings, but even she could see the way that sadness had weighed her down. There was a stretch of time where her sister – so bright, so shining – had dulled; her smile never quite crept into her eyes, her laugh wasn’t filled with open joy and wild abandon, even her voice had seemed to shrink in weight and size. So of course, her young sister not dancing is not the end of the world or even the worst thing from the past year. But the sight of Lydia sitting, smiling softly at the dance floor but with her feet still and firmly planted on the ground fills her sadness all the same.

She walks over, then slides, twirls and stretches her hand out below her.

“Ready to tear up the dance floor, Lyds?” She says with a ridiculous little shoulder shrug.

Lydia laughs at her and shakes her head. “I don’t think so…although I’ll be more than willing to sit here and laugh at your tearing it up.”

She has a strange sense of deja vu, flashing back to a wedding three years ago, only the positions had been switched.

The song wound down and switched to a slow dance, with the DJ ordering all couples onto the dance floor to sway and cuddle. She sat down and scooted close to her sister.

“You’re lucky that the song changed, otherwise I would’ve just dragged you out there. Just like you always did to me.”

Her sister smiled up at her and then rested her head on Elizabeth’s shoulder.

“I always liked it when you danced.”

Lydia snorted. “I wasn’t very good at it.”

Elizabeth chuckled. “Well, you were never gonna be a candidate for America’s Got Talent.” She tucked a strand of Lydia’s hair behind her ear. “But you always had so much fun. And so did everyone else around you. I mean, you even got your stodgy older sister to dance a few times, as horrifying as that sight is.”

Lydia laughed, a real, bright laugh that looked like it startled her for a moment. “Oh my God, do you remember at the Gibbon’s wedding when you ran into that guy with the white tux and he spilled wine all over his suit?

Elizabeth chuckled. “Well, I mean, really. Who wears a white tux to a wedding? And he was rude to Mary. He definitely deserved it.”

Lydia looked up at her, then dropped her gaze back down to her twisting hands in her lap.

“You never told me how ridiculous I looked every time I danced.” She glanced up at Elizabeth, a dreary look in her eyes. “I always looked half crazed and out of control. And I’m pretty sure I would always accidentally end up hurting myself as I, like, gyrated carelessly across the dance floor.”

Lydia sighed, and smiled up at Elizabeth, though her eyes took on a faraway look. Elizabeth nuzzled her baby sister’s head with her eye, then smoothed her hair softly as she started to speak, softly, full of love.

“It wasn’t carelessness. Or wildness. It was enthusiasm. You were always brimming over with it. And it didn’t matter what anyone thought of you or how silly you might have looked – you were gonna go out there and have fun and anyone who didn’t get it was taking themselves too seriously.” She says, peering down at her sister. “I was always a little jealous of that, you know? I was always too self conscious to really enjoy myself , too worried about how gangly my legs were or if I was poking someone with my elbows.”

Lydia smiled. “Well, it’s a valid concern. You do have really pointy elbows.”

Elizabeth huffed and lightly kneaded Lydia in the ribs with her elbow. “C’mon, next terrible dance remix to some lame pop song and we’ll head out there. We’ll throw our hands around wildly and gyrate half a beat too late. I’ll attempt not to look like Elaine from Seinfeld, while you attempt not to get your shins kicked.” Lydia laughed quietly, then look towards the dance floor.

“It’s been a while since I danced. It’s a little…scary, I guess.” She glanced up at Elizabeth. “My…shins aren’t quite as strong as they used to be. And I’m a little more aware of how silly I look.”

Elizabeth smiled down at her and said, “That’s why your big sister is gonna be out there with you – protecting your soft shins and drawing all potential teasing to her own atrocious dance moves. And, you know, making you wheeze in laughter at my attempts to stay on beat.” She then nudged Lydia to look towards the dance floor. “And seriously? Look over there, those two in the green and yellow? They kind of look like they’re having seizures. And the ones by the booth, with their drinks in hand? I’m pretty sure those are not dance moves but aerobics steps. But none of them care.”

Lydia looked at her, then said wryly, “So you’re saying we should leave our comfortable chairs and go join the ranks of the people that you just openly mocked for their terrible dance moves?”

Elizabeth smiled. “No, I’m saying that the only thing sillier than bad dancing, is being the one sitting down, grumpily mocking bad dancers for the fun that they’re having.”

The slow song began to wind down and a drilling bass began to echo through the reception hall.

Elizabeth got up and extended her hand to her little sister once more.

“C’mon, let’s go make fools of ourselves.” She twirled herself and then took on a tone of voice that was uncannily similar to her younger sister’s. “It’ll be good for us! Loosen up the body, get the blood flowing!” She smiled brightly and wiggled her eyebrows at her sister.

Lydia threw her head back and laughed, then took Elizabeth’s hand and let herself be pulled up. She threw her hands up, did a small shoulder shake, then did a rather stilted moonwalk towards the dance floor.

“That dance floor better watch out. I’m back and better than ever!”

Elizabeth laughed and grabbed Lydia’s hand, and together they ran and slid over to dance floor, not caring who was looking or how silly they might’ve looked.

---

**Title taken from the TSwift song – “Holy Ground”

 

Only human.

You are a woman. Skin and bones. Veins and nerves. Hair and sweat.
You are not made of metaphors. Not apologies. Not excuses.
//Sarah Kay, The Type

---

When she thinks back on it, she believes that the turning point in her career had to be the day she had to contend with a bout of crying in the middle of a silent class.

Of course, any one who has been a teacher long enough – especially in the 8th grade – has undoubtedly seen quite a few children burst into tears. It’s understandable of course – all those surging emotions and broken hearts. The difference here being that the sobbing had been her own, and while she had been in an eighth grade classroom, she was not 13 years old and dressed in the red polo shirt and khaki pants of the prescribed school uniform – rather she was 26, dressed in a pencil skirt and a floral blouse, and sitting at the teacher’s desk.

And the crying wasn’t the kind that you do in the movie theater, when the lead has just sacrificed his or her life, or the lovers are never reunited after all. It wasn’t a stray tear out of the corner of your eye that you could hastily wipe up. It wasn’t even the light sobbing you do as someone’s breaking up with you, the kind where your eyes fill up and tears begin to leak down your face but you still gainfully manage to keep your face from crumbling.

No, this would probably be more appropriately called weeping. This was the kind of crying you only ever hear about in old Victorian novels, where the heroine throws herself across the floor keening in despair and beating at her chest; this was old testament bawling, loud cries bordering on hysterics, so complete that she had to keep gasping for air to fully fuel the sobs being ripped from her chest.

Even in the midst of her sobs, she felt ridiculous. Which really only contributed to the prolonging of the said sobbing. She had imagined herself a superhero, but had been brought down by one too many bad classes. She had thought of herself as a wall – high and impenetrable – but she had crumbled after a single, ill-timed snarky retort at the end of a long day. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be, she kept thinking to herself, as she sat, head in hands, gasping through her fingers. She was a superhero and insults bounced off of her; her students were glass and she could see right through them; she was a statue and nothing could touch her.

She was none of those things. Suddenly, her despair deepened and the sobs that had finally, finally begun to abate started afresh once more. She was bombarded with thoughts that she was too soft, she was too young, she was to0 wide-eyed and pliable; that there would be no coming back from this, now; that now all the other teachers, all the others students, her entire world would come to learn what she had feared the most – that she was an impostor, a fraud, a useless adult masquerading as a capable teacher.

What can I do? She thought miserably.

“What did you say?” One brave student said in front of her, tentatively looking up from his lap and towards her.

She realized she must have spoken her thought out loud.

“I said, what can I do? What can I do to make this class better?” Of course she was still half crying and too short of breath, so the question came out more like, “Wh-wh-what ca-an I dooo? Wh-at can I do – hiccup- to maaaaake -deep breath- th-this class be-tt-tter?” She took a deep breath, forcing her sore throat to swallow back her tears. Softly, as though the volume of her voice would keep away any more tears, she continued. “I want you all to get out a piece of paper and tell me what I can do to make this class better. I like you guys but…but we can’t do this any more. Something has to give.”

She lightly sobbed at the end of the last sentence. Something had given, of course, and they all knew it. She was weak, pitiful, a wounded sorry sight.

One by one her students crept up to her, laid their papers on her desk and quietly returned to their seats. She could hear low whispers and hushed tones, but they were too low to clearly heard. She was too low to fully hear them. She kept her eyes firmly fixed on her clasped hands in her lap, twisting like as though they had the knobs to her tear ducts beneath them. She could only guess at their content – the murmured gloating of seeing a fallen, shattered enemy combatant; or giddy, secondhand embarrassment that comes with a loss of respect.

Once her students had quietly left the room to join the cacophony of their classmates in the whole, she slunk down in her chair once more, head in her hands. She might have begun sobbing once more, if a student hadn’t slowly come back in and shuffled up to her desk. She looked up at him – the loudest, the ringleader, the hardest to wrangle. She could only imagine how she looked – eyes shot through with red and puffy, hair in disarray.

He looked down at his hands and then flicked a speck of imaginary dust off her desk. Finally, he looked her in the eye, face solemn and drawn.

“I just want to say that I’m really sorry.” He motioned to the stack of papers on her desk. “We’re all really sorry.” He focused once more at her desk. “Everyone likes you. And we didn’t…we didn’t know we were hurting you. We’ll be better.”

She stared at him, dumbfounded for a moment. Then smiled. It was tremulous, true, and she could still taste the salt from her tears in her mouth, but it was a real, genuine smile.

“Thank you. I really appreciate that.” Her voice shook with unshed tears, though now for a different reason. “And it’s ok. Tomorrow is a new day. It’ll be a good one.” She surprised herself with that statement. She’d mostly said it to fill up the awkward silence that had cropped up, but was surprised to find that she both meant it and believed it.

He nodded at her, face still serious, then shuffled quickly out of her class.

She smiled once more and grabbed the stack of papers on her desk. Paper after paper contained apologies and promises to be better; many contained phrases similar to the one her student had just uttered – we didn’t realize we were hurting you.

She sat back, contemplating the day. She was embarrassed by what had happened – mortified was probably closer to the truth, really – and she didn’t see that changing any time soon. And it wouldn’t do at all to constantly burst into tears at the end of every long day. She would need to toughen up in that regard, keep a closer watch on her emotions that were always so easily bubbling over the surface. But, surprisingly, other than the mortification she felt…okay. No, she was not a superhero, or an impenetrable wall, or a stone statue. But she was also not a fraud or fake or an impostor.

She was just a person who was sometimes sad, sometimes joyful; with skin that was sometimes too thin but with a heart big enough for all her students.

She was only human, and now everyone knew it.

And that was just fine.

 

Ms. Frankenstein

Words at night were feral things.
//Joy Williams

---

Her powers were always stronger at night – and more frightening.

Recently, she had asked the team why they couldn’t just go out and patrol in the daytime. “I could be like, you know, the light knight…or the day knight.” She had said jokingly. A few had rolled their eyes at her. She had shrugged and kept smiling. She thought it was pretty clever. Marcus had been the one to dryly remind her that most criminal activity was likely to operate in the darkest hours of the night, in the darkest parts of the city.

“Not embezzlers! Or…high level drug dealers?” She had replied, though she wasn’t quite sure about that second one. She was still a newbie to the whole crime fighting thing. She wouldn’t even have asked if she wasn’t close to desperate.

Marcus shook his head. “And what are you going to do with the embezzlers? Create an army of their employees to complain at them?” He grinned at her. “C’mon. Your power is made for darkness. It’s the stuff of nightmares. Sometimes it even scares the shit out of me.” He’d slapped her on the back. “I’m sure as hell glad you’re on our side.”

She sighed and shook her head, shaking the memory from her mind and rolling over to face the nightlight adjacent to her bed. Her creations were the stuff of nightmares – but only at night time. She thought back to that glorious day, one year ago from today, when she discovered that what had been a life long love of creative storytelling had suddenly become the ability to create and control solid energy constructs through her words (“I’m like Green Lantern without the ring but I have to say out loud what I want,” she had then explained excitedly to her flummoxed best friend).

But as she began testing the limits of what she could do, she discovered the frightening limitations (potential, Marcus would always say) of her powers. What would take shape as an affable dog in the daytime – fluffy, shining coat, eyes bright with love and devotion – would become a snarling, hideous beast in the night – jaws snapping, eyes wild, a growl that seemed to cut right through you. They were certainly effective at both scaring criminals and taking them down, but a part of her always felt like these creations were not really a part of her – that at any moment they could break free of her and begin lives on their own.

Really, she had only gone to the team a few months ago to seek the help of Dr. Vis, the team’s resident genius and scientist (she’d once asked Mr. Light which branch of science Dr. Vis had his doctorate in, to which Mr. Light had simply replied – “All of them, I think.”). He’d been able to discern the nature of her powers almost immediately, as well as what troubled her about them. Her problem was a simple one, shared by almost all children under the age of five – she was afraid of the dark.

“That’s it?!” She’d cried, bewildered and a little embarrassed when Dr. Vis delivered his conclusion.

He looked calmly down at her. “Of course. It’s quite obvious, really. Your power comes from your words, it’s true, but your words are influenced by your thoughts and down, of course, to your feelings. When you use your powers at night, your words are weaker so your creations don’t come out as well-defined but your emotions are so powerful that they infuse your constructs with more strength than normal. The constructs retain the basic shapes of your words but your fear morphs them into more frightening versions of what you intended.”

She fidgeted in her seat, then looked up at him. “Sometimes at night, when I create these…things…they don’t really feel fully in my control. It’s like they’re wild, feral things.” She paused. “Is there a chance that one of these creations will…break free? Of me, I mean. And go out and start doing their own thing?”

He’d looked troubled then – only for a moment – but she saw it flit across his face before he once again schooled his features to blandness.

“I’m not sure.”

She shivered in her bed as she thought about the memory. She rolled onto her back and propped herself up as she looked for the remote. As she slowly drifted off the sound of infomercials on the screen, a thought drifted through her mind – “At least I don’t talk in my sleep.”

All that I didn’t want.

 I suppose in the end it’s almost too easy to look back and say what you should have done, how you might have changed things. What’s harder – what’s much, much harder – is to accept what you actually did do.
//Peter Hook

---

I have already decided
not to be honest about it all.
The honesty would kill you, I reason to myself.
I plan out every moment of the conversation.
I convince myself that honesty is not always the best policy;
that they also say how much the truth can hurt, too.
And isn’t that what I want? To hurt you in the least possible way
(I ignore that niggling voice in my head
that screams about how much I’ve hurt you already.)

Later, when all my pretty plans come crashing down,
and I wring myself out of all the things I could have said –
wishing that I hadn’t been struck so dumb by the enormity of your question
(later knowing that at least in this one last moment,
we’d finally both gotten what we’d deserved all along) –
I realize that the truth reads like empty lines off a script,
and the lies sound like the real reasons:

It’s not you, it’s me (truth)
You can really do much better (truth)
I’m just not right for you (truth)
You deserve something more (truth)
I just don’t love you anymore (lie)

It’s bad enough
that I cannot, do not tell the truth.
Even though it’s what you deserve to hear.
But what’s worse is that when the moment comes –
I cannot lie.
Even though the truth is so much less than what you deserve
(and so shattering.)

“Did you ever love me?” You ask, voice pleading, eyes glassy with unshed hope.

A thousand responses flood my brain,
each one weaker than the last:
Who wouldn’t?
I should’ve.
I wanted to.
I really tried.

All the beautiful lies congeal, turn to glue in my throat.
I can’t spit them out but I can’t swallow them either, even though I’m desperate to
so that I can drudge up shiny new ones, old ones, bad ones.
Anything but this black silence.
Anything but the betrayal blooming in your eyes.
There are no sounds but the ticking clock – the judgment of a just god.
A god who let me feed our past with elegant deceptions,
but won’t let me choke the future with them any more.

Sometimes, I think of alternate versions of this story –
One where you never ask that question because I tell you the whole, ugly truth to begin with
and you leave hating me immediately, just as I deserve.
But I breath a sigh of relief, because finally, finally my mouth is not a traitor.
Or else, one where I reply immediately, honestly,
and you leave heartbroken and angry, which is still less than I deserve.
But I slump into the couch any way, lighter than before, because at last I’m not bound by my reviling deceptions.
But in the here and the now
in the truth of the situation –
I am only tricked into honesty,
my silence giving you everything I didn’t want you to hear.
And as you leave, betrayed and blindsided, I am crushed by my own foolish, traitorous heart
burdened by the knowledge that I could never, and now will never, give you the honesty that you deserve.

A minor key.

You are all the best parts of all the songs I love.
//Iain S. Thomas, I wrote this for you

---

You are not my home or my safe place.
You are not the body I reach for unconsciously in the night
when I’ve had a bad dream and my heart is racing.
You are not the face I look into for reassurance,
or the one whose hands I can trace without once looking up.

You are not my Waterloo or my Alamo.
You are not the trainwreck or my sinking ship.
You will never be ground zero
in the disaster that is  my heart –
no survivors found.

No, you are Taylor Swift
as her voice crests to the crescendo of the strings,
and I am
shining like fireworks
over your sad, empty town.
You are Florence Welch
venting at how hard it is
to dance with the devil on your back
reminding me, voice blazing through the radio
over and over again to shake it off.
You are the cool smugness of Beyonce declaring that
You must not know about me
that
I can have another you in a minute.
You are Gloria Gaynor as she triumphantly proclaims
at karaoke bars or alone in cars
Oh no, not I.
I will survive. 

You are all the best parts
of all the songs I love to sing
that remind me that loving you
was never any thing
worth writing songs about.

 

Not today.

 Perhaps, the problem is not the intensity of your love, but the quality of the people you are loving.
//Warsan Shire

---

The first time that she thinks she’s in love she isn’t really (but oh how hindsight is 20/20). He’s kind enough, good looking enough, smart enough (he could do with a bit more of a sense of humor, but she lets it slide). She’s young enough to think that perhaps that’s what it could be – just enough. He’s stable. Steady. He’s with her at her math competitions, at her soccer matches, helps her study late the night before her AP Calculus test. Basically, he’s just there, which is more than she can say for the people in her life who were supposed to have loved her since inception.  One night he asks her – “Why do you love me?” She’s struck silent for a long moment – a rare feat for her. She wishes it was because there were too many thoughts running through her mind – but the simple truth is that because nothing comes to mind. Finally, panic rising in her, she blurts out – “Well, you’re there.” – which is meaner than she meant but more truthful than she realizes. She ends it then, because what else can you do at that point? She resolves then to never just settle on good enough.

The second time she falls in love it’s so passionately idiotic that she thinks – this must be it. They meet at a party that her roommate drags her to (you need to get out or you’ll merge into the matrix, she says threateningly), literally runs into him with the red cup of beer warmed by being carted around in her hand for the past half hour. He laughs it off and doesn’t mind her babbling apology (doesn’t even ask her if she’s drunk as she rambles on about how much she doesn’t want to be at this party). He takes her out for dinner that night and doesn’t head home until three days later (to the endless smug amusement of the aforementioned roommate). Two months later, they move into an apartment together that’s equidistant to both their colleges  and therefore equally inconvenient for the both of them. She’s had to explain her senior thesis to him more times than she can count – and she’s still not sure he really understands what it’s about. She can’t stand most of his fellow English majors that flit in and out of their apartment. It ends four months later, as passionately as it began, when they realize that their neediness for one another is the kind that only leaves you wanting. She makes two New Year’s resolutions that year – never date a boy from Boston College and never mistake passion for love.

The third time she falls in love she thinks about how unimaginative it all really is. He’s devastatingly handsome (the words of all the girls – and a few men – in her department); has a boyish charm that’s gotten him through the many small and large scrapes he manages to get himself into; possesses a dark intensity that hints at hidden depths. She’s determined not to be beguiled by the handsomeness of his face or the obvious lines of muscle partially covered by his shirtsleeves. She doesn’t mind his visits to her cubicle, tells herself that there’s nothing wrong with appreciating a fine male form. It’s almost one year later and many late nights working for him (and yes, she tells her best friend over the phone one night, it really is just working. Do you think I’d be this cranky all the time if there was anything else to tell?”) that she realizes that what she thought was an appreciation of a elegant jawline, an annoyed affection to his teeth-gritting commitment to principle, an admiration of his unyielding loyalty is actually complete, total, and foolish love.

This love is not the pleasant buzzing of constancy from her teenage years nor is it the rollercoaster of despair and euphoria remembered from her early twenties. It is warmth spreading throughout her limbs and keeping her flushed and glowing, steady, spreading through her entire being and through all facets of her life. She does not regard him as perfect – she’s in love, not an imbecile – and accepts that her love is a thing that he cannot accept at this point in his life. If he were to reach for her now, it would be as a bandaid, a glass of scotch at the end of the day, a crutch when he found himself limping from the injuries of memory. Knowing this does not make it simpler or easier. It all comes crashing down when she realizes that he knows – that’s he known and has used it. Not against her, exactly, but to further the cause, to advance his own agendas. Their agendas, she corrects in her head. It is then that she realizes she must leave. She realizes that despite her attempts, has somehow become a bandaid, a glass of scotch, a crutch and now a propeller, for  love cannot be hidden – it longs to be recognized and used. So she leaves, not so dramatically as with a note and an empty apartment – she follows social and professional protocols as necessary – but it feels monumental all the same.

Soft heart.

Having a soft heart in a cruel world is courage, not weakness.
//Katherine Henson

---

She looks out at the sea of faces in front of her. About a quarter are looking directly at her, a hint of a smile on their mouths or in their eyes. Another quarter are staring at her, their expression just short of a glare. A good half are staring blankly at some point just past her head. She likes to think that perhaps they are mulling over some deep thought about love or life, but it’s more likely that they are trying to figure out what time this class gets out.

And this, she thinks wryly, is actually a good day.

It’s not quite what she imagined when she began the school year. It’s not just opening doors to different places and times; it’s not just debating about the finer points of this character or that action; it’s not just looking deep into our own lives and seeing how they’re reflected in the text.

It’s the principal’s expectations and updating the data wall. It’s poring over test scores and marked interventions for this kid and that.  It’s filling out forms and keeping data logs and spreadsheets filled with charts. It’s parent phone calls home, reminders of conferences and behavior contracts. It’s working with fellow teachers to figure out a behavior plan and well, who does get to go on this field trip?

Some days,when exhaustion is dripping  from her pores and her heart is heavy from the stories of the day, she thinks – am I too soft for this?

She asks around and gets the same basic answer –

“You gotta harden yourself, or else you’ll never make it in herel!”

And she knows, in some way, they’re partly right. She has to be able to discern between a lie to cover up misbehavior and a lie to cover up personal shame. She has to be able to be firm in the face of a barrage of whining. She sees the rigidness in others’ spines, their uncompromising natures, the voices that she can hear booming from their classrooms halfway down the halls.

But she remembers a lesson from some long ago science class – hard things are easy to break. Diamonds are unyielding but easily shattered. It is toughness that allows you to weather multiple blows.

She understands that temptation to scream and yell. To send kids out of the room and lobby for suspension. She is perfectly capable of seeing why so many throw their hands up in despair or impatience or a sense of failure and declare a cause lost. It’s easy to do when you’re tired of the complaining and the hemming and hawing; exhausted from the constant stream of data and the feeling that your students are just not gaining ground fast enough; upset from the little meanness that children can inflict on one another and on you.

It’s easy to be hard. To harden your heart and move on, day by day.

But this is not a battlefield, she thinks to herself one day. She is not a general and they are not enemy combatants waiting to gun her down.

They are only children, begging to be heard and known.

And it isn’t just about knowing their standardized test scores or their grades or their behavior reports.

It’s also knowing who comes to school hungry every day and how sneak extra food from breakfast to take home to younger siblings. It’s noticing who shows up on winter days without a coat and too many holes in their shoes. It’s realizing who comes from a broken marriage or walked in with a broken heart. It’s finding out whose parents are trying, trying so hard to make ends meet with two different jobs and somehow still make it to parent conferences. It’s walking the line between making excuses and seeing the explanations.

So she takes care to moderate her voice and listen to their complaints. To tell it to them straight but without bitterness or mean sarcasm. To treat them like human beings, sometimes human beings in training (because, no, you should never say some things that a thirteen year old thinks to say), but never as horses whose spirits she has to break, or hopeless cases to pass on from one grade to the next.

There are no places in her teacher portfolio or a check box on her observations to show how much her students trust her; how unafraid they are to tell her of aching hearts and the tears of their parents; how they’ll show her finished homework and say – “I did it because I like when you tell me you’re proud of me.” But she swells up with pride all the same.

“You’re much easier on them than life ever will be.” Someone says to her over lunch one day. It’s meant to be a soft critique, she knows, but a part of her is happy for it. Because long ago she realized that these kids know how hard life can be. These kids who go home to absent fathers and fridges with too little food; who move three or four times in the year because they keep getting evicted; who have slept in cars for weeks on end and have to save up for weeks for the five dollars to attend the end of the year field trip. Let her forever be kinder to them than life is.

In every beautiful place.

And when I leave you will finally understand, why storms are named after people.
//Caitlyn Siehl

---

He wants to tell people that she left a trail of destruction in her wake, but the truth is that his life has never seemed cleaner. The clothes that had always been strewn randomly around the house now always find their way into the hamper; the dishes never linger in the sink to cake and crust and mold; even the books that were always haphazardly piled by the bed are neatly shelved – Gaiman always coming after Gabaldon, Chesterton never preceded by Chomsky.

His car is so clean that he sometimes walks right past it in parking lots, failing to recognize it with its gleaming fenders and streak free windows. He volunteers to be DD every time, even though all his friends can afford the cab fare. He asks waiters to hold the cheese and sour cream, orders tea instead of soda, never springs for dessert. Every morning he greets the rising sun with the sound of his footprints on the pavement and sweat dripping down his face.

“This is good,” his sister tells him over lunch one day (dressing on the side, please. And no, I don’t need any cheese sprinkled on top). “You aren’t wallowing. You’re not letting yourself drown in sorrow.” He knows what she wants to say – that this love had been a force of nature, that it had barreled into his life with gale force wants and scorching smiles. That she was afraid he would not survive once the tide had receded; that he would wade deeper and deeper trying to catch the diminishing ocean until the bottom dropped beneath him and he was swallowed up completely.

He smiles at his sister and nods, then talks about his new personal trainer.

He does not tell his sister that the day it ended, he had gathered all of her things with every intent of throwing them out but could only make it to the corner of his room. That he had deposited those things and then climbed into bed with his blanket wrapped around him, like a child after a bad dream, cowering from loose sheets of papers and discarded cardigans. He does not talk about finding her bobby pins in the bathroom behind the toothbrush holder, seeing her favorite beer in someone else’s hand, tasting a dessert and instinctively wanting to bring half of it home to her, how he felt each small thing rise before him like a monument to their failed love, the bitterness of it seeping into his bones and turning into lead.  He had become a terrified archaeologist, holding his breath every time he glanced this way or that, hoping not to find artifacts from his life before. The only way to cauterize the wound had been to scrape her from the skeleton of his life.

“Looks like the storm is dying down.” He hears his sister saying, breaking into his musing.

He looks outside at the freshly fallen snow, powdery soft and eye-achingly white. The winds had died down though the snow continues to fall slowly to the ground.

“I like the way the world looks after a snowstorm.” He says, continuing to stare out into the street.

She snorts. “Since when? You hate snow.” She glances over at him, head cocked slightly. “You always went on about how cool the summer storms were when we used to visit Grandma. Remember those?”

He does. The air would be warm as fat raindrops shot down from the sky. Lightning would charge up the sky and the clouds would be a constant rumble of thunder. He would always run out in those storms despite his Grandma’s warnings of danger, dancing with his baby sister in the torrents of rain, opening his mouth to the cool rain. Ten minutes later, the rains would be over but the rest of the desert would be alive – washes and gutters fat with rainwater, carrying fallen plants along their path; snails and worms coming up through the dirt and promptly plucked up by grubby hands; leaves and flowers seeming to sigh and breath, refreshed by the sudden shower. As a boy it had seemed to him that a summer storm made everything come to life.

He feels a soft pressure on his hand and opens his eyes to look at the worried face of his sister. He hadn’t even realized that they’d been closed. He smiles at her and shrugs.

“I remember they wreaked havoc and then were gone and we’d have to pick up all the fallen leaves and garden equipment in the backyard.” He squeezes her hand before letting go, then motions outside. “Snow is simple. It’s clean. It covers up what you don’t really want to see and for a moment, everything gets to be beautiful again.”

When you marry

When you first marry, they tell you all sorts of things
(they being your mother, your aunties, and all the women you never wanted to listen to)
most of all the mantra seems to be
“pick your battles.”

but when you’re young this advice seems impossible.
everything seems important –
how are you supposed to pick?

it’s infuriating the way he never puts the clothes in the hamper
or wears his shoes all over the house
the dishes are never washed
and you always have to walk the dog.

but eventually you do realize that some battles are more important
and you come to a peaceable agreement –
or at least an armistice
(he keeps his clothes on the floor of the extra bedroom, which you almost never go into; his shoes at least never come off in the bedroom; you wash the dishes and he puts them away; you now walk the dog together at night – he does it in the morning to give you time before work)

so you have learned to pick your battles.

but what they never told you is how many battles you would fight
but not have to fight alone.
marriage is not just about choosing your battles
but realizing that you now have an ally
a field commander
a general
and place to go home to.

the battles of work
and friends
family and just
life
in all the various shit it throws at you.
those you no longer fight alone.

so yes, you must learn to pick your battles
within the marriage, within the home.
but you never have to find an ally
for battles you’ve always had to fight alone.

Early morning

This morning I ran my hands through your hair while you slept. Or, maybe, you were only half asleep and didn’t mind the hands slipping through the strands.

In the mornings with your wild hair and soft eyelashes, I like to reflect on our marriage. On loving you.

I think – maybe if you hadn’t sat next to me, if I hadn’t said yes to breakfast, if you hadn’t decided to walk with me that one day – then I would never get to shape that dark haired, ever-changing mass you sometimes grow out longer than mine is now; sometimes buzz so short that my fingers skate over, don’t glide through.

Your hair which curls when you grow it out so long, so thick that sometimes my fingers get stuck and I have to gently comb out the tangles. I am jealous of it, at times. Me, with my stick straight hair, so thin and fine that it could never hold a curl when it was long. Your hair is thick and wavy, I can curl it with my fingers and it stays; if we have a daughter one day, I hope she has your hair. (Though perhaps she would wish for hair that was more manageable; I can picture her wailing about hair that never lays flat, that grows up and out rather than straight and down. I will laugh and say that her father’s hair is one of my favorite things about him and then I will kiss you right on the lips, while she sticks out her tongue in disgust and looks away.)

I am glad to be the one to wake up with your hair tickling my nose. Happy to get to run my hands through it when you are sad, or need help falling asleep, or have a headache. I am glad that it is all my own, that you are all my own, that I love someone so much I wrote an ode to their hair.