Riddle

She steps lightly on the glass, her footsteps passing slightly
And shivers when the clearest light of dawn passes over the earth's rim
As below her, ripples ebb from six small feet atop the water.

There are lost people here. Sometimes we sit on the pavement, arms around our knees, and stare out at nothing. Sometimes we're trying to think, or realize we haven't thought so well in a long tie. We walk barefoot over the perfectly mown grass and look up at the straggling dearth of leaves in the trees. A bag beside us, we sit outside, cold, but more awake than we've been in a while. We wish someone might come across us, ask us. Go for a walk and think and talk- about what, we aren't sure. We want to feel alive again, like we did that day with the wind in our hair and the smell of the sea all around us. Unbeknowst to us, from a window, someone sees. They turn away, they almost come down to speak. When they look back again,we have disappeared.

I remember the first time I read cummings- or perhaps not the first time, but the first time I remember, it was music class. We girls, a chorus of misfit divas and shy women about to become great. We were not a whole, not a community, but all of us crowded around in the two minutes before class to bend our heads and read the papers stashed, secreted away under our plastic chairs we sang the choir songs, of Iesu, the songs of Cabaret, but in my head I only sang in broken phrases waiting under plastic chairs a chair that wasn't mine, I'd only had a glimpse of words, haphazardly printed all on two sides of one somewhat crumpled page, no seeming structure, beautiful thought as thoughts come poetry. That's how I fell in love.

Grapefruit

A grapefruit, even perpetually unopened, is so much more than a round thing, a ball. Though I toss it in the air, when I hold it in my hand, I hold so much potential, so much life. The fruit is a living item, cool from the windowsill, holding a sense of self completely apart from my own. I hold it cupped in my hands and feel another being, something I cannot bear to break, something whole. While it sits in my windowsill, I cannot help but regard it. I respect it, the grapefruit. It fills me with a sort of mottled joy, the shaded, speckled skin uneven, scarred, blushing in parts. The odor is slight, but the effect profound. The skin, the acetic oils shine in the lamplight. Something that I cannot understand endears me greatly to this grapefruit, which sits so cold, so smug, so clearly at peace.

How do we make a difference? Amnesty International is on the corner; Change.org emails me every day. New pieces of the universe are being discovered, slowly worked out in laboratories around the world. But I only touch the little pieces of the world around me, am touched in return by the little world I live in- a new friend from the office made cookies today; my friend got a dog and it makes her happy again. What matters?

I think perhaps I've grown shallower as I have aged. My words came so quickly, once. Aged, of course, is wrong- my self-conscious writing corrects: At twenty-one, my youth is all around me. But aged, too, in a way: not seven, not seventeen. Perhaps the words are gone because the woods are taken out of me: I walk for hours, but for hours dead leaves decompose underfoot Down paved-over suburban lanes- The little forest pockets are sad, somehow Or frightening. So much is hidden, and even if I dig None of the leaves turn to needles, and I am not in my heart's home. Even as I write this, I sit: On the fourth floor My whitewashed walls around me My window open: this, at least, I will not concede. Not even on the coldest days. But even then, I'm lacking thought. I seek the clarity that once I found so easily- That once I couldn't cause to leave me alone To let me sleep. I run and try to think, to get my head out of myself Out of the self-indulgent rituals I've allowed Of waiting Of staying warm Of eating when I am hungry Not letting myself suffer until the clarity appears. My greatest fear is that I will remain indulgent self: Grow older, maybe "wiser" (shudder), take a job on the wrong coast for the wrong rent -rent itself, once so abhorrent in my mind- to chase a lack of dream down the sky. Perhaps there's still a chance. I have to stay present. I cannot let the anodynes of life suck me dry.

City

I'm trying very hard to withhold judgment on living in the city. But I don't like it. The only upside is convenience, and that's not much, all things considered. And there's not much you can do at night- either drink and spend a lot of money, or stay at home. Or a friend's place, which is nice. But I've been trying to figure out what's really been bothering me, and I think I found it. Anonymity. Some people go to the city to be unknown and easily forgotten. This is a certain kind of freedom, I suppose. But it's anonymity of the wrong sort, I think. It's anonymous as in no one says hello or if they do, you wonder what they want. It's not the emotional release anonymity which you can find in a car alone, loud singing, or crying, or thinking undisturbed thoughts. Not anonymity of the woods alone, a quiet place to sing loudly (this is mandatory, I think) or read or wander or sit not to be found. Not the alone time of a room that's your own, a book, a mug, chocolate secret from the drawer, a cat perhaps. Or it's worse, perhaps, to be not-anonymous: a face in the crowd that people notice. And people notice, here in the city. Today, walking to work, I overheard seven men comment on my appearance. I walk eight blocks to work. I didn't wear anything abnormal or provocative today. Or yesterday, even more comments (all from men) on my way home, including a yelling man, shouting nonsense and coming at me closer than I was expecting before he walked away. Nice ones, sometimes (the man in the park who ran to catch up with me to tell me I looked cute and then walked away) but eyes still unsolicited over-appreciative always the men staring. Maybe because I'm anonymous or they're anonymous it seems okay? They don't know me, so I am meat to them, perhaps. Or they won't see me, so they might as well jump. I don't like the city. I'm too visible here. And too alone.

That unshakeable feeling-
I've had it all day, where the world
moves before my eyes
rather than my eyes moving in the world.

I think that I've been missing
gone for a while, the former
versions of myself:
The one who took long walks at midnight
to feel alone in a bigger world
to be barefoot on pavement in a faraway land
The one who collected flowers and
discarded spoons
tied them together with a quote from a book
and a ribbon fallen from a cheerleader's hair
left these little bundles on doorsteps and ran away laughing
The one who never slept
as long as they thought she did
because the words kept flowing out of the page
or out of her hand
or into her mind, whichever
I need more words
I can't yet say enough.

Those selves, I miss them.
Thinking of them I walk down a forest path
break off this twig and that
barefoot again

I will always have lived
in an enchanted wood
held hummingbirds and butterflies
and cleaned in secret so they wouldn't know
who had been kind.
Even in my bright-lit world
remember me,
I beg myself