She Wants to Rewrite That Paper
Students rarely bring tears to my eyes, and then usually for the wrong reasons. Now and then. What is it we’re doing here anyway? Sisyphus pushed boulders up mountains eternally. That’s not my picture. Can’t be. But there’s our model. Push, criticize, push, judge, push, cajole, push.
Inspire. How do you inspire when the wood isn’t yet dry enough to spark or the winds resist your attempts? The alternative to shove is not carrot, not reason, but — trust? The most difficult human feat. We can only inspire with trust, and that trust must be born of beauty. The deepseated knowledge that seeds will sprout in sunlight, with enough water and warmth.
She thought her paper was crap. The entire paper was about failure. One failure after another. A list. A litany of examples, including the paper itself. Her fear of writing, of even starting to write, because failure sat begging at every corner.
Except for the first sentence.
She said she had never done things the way people expected her to. She had always worked things out her own way. She never relied on yellow brick roads, but hacked paths through rainforest, despite the bugs and their extra long teeth. For her, for this paper this was a sign of failure. For now.
But that first sentence set the tone and I couldn’t look down the list of failures. I looked askance. How can so many failures not correspond to incomparable growth? Under the surface still. Growth, success, surprise, step by step into the abyss, but never failure. Never stop letting the line out. Balanced upon a single steel cable attached to one crumbling chimney and the moon, carefully laid one step at a time.
The stairs may never lead anywhere but up.
But up.
The stars are still visible despite the neon on Main Street. Despite the cell phones and their text messages, surveys, and advertisements promising to make us perfect. Because we’re failures. But the moon is there every night. Lighting pebbles. Showing the way.
I wrote almost as much on her paper as she did, then included a poem. And a picture. That one sentence burned into my head. This student, a child still, really. And already branded, lost but certain of where she was supposed to be. That one sentence, and the fact that she did turn in the paper. She thought the paper was crap. And then she read my picture, and she skipped her next class to think about it.
She met me after school. She wants to rewrite the paper.
Students rarely bring tears to my eyes, and then usually for the wrong reasons. Now and then. What is it we’re doing here anyway? Sisyphus pushed boulders up mountains eternally. That’s not my picture. Can’t be. But there’s our model. Push, criticize, push, judge, push, cajole, push.
Inspire. How do you inspire when the wood isn’t yet dry enough to spark or the winds resist your attempts? The alternative to shove is not carrot, not reason, but — trust? The most difficult human feat. We can only inspire with trust, and that trust must be born of beauty. The deepseated knowledge that seeds will sprout in sunlight, with enough water and warmth.
She thought her paper was crap. The entire paper was about failure. One failure after another. A list. A litany of examples, including the paper itself. Her fear of writing, of even starting to write, because failure sat begging at every corner.
Except for the first sentence.
She said she had never done things the way people expected her to. She had always worked things out her own way. She never relied on yellow brick roads, but hacked paths through rainforest, despite the bugs and their extra long teeth. For her, for this paper this was a sign of failure. For now.
But that first sentence set the tone and I couldn’t look down the list of failures. I looked askance. How can so many failures not correspond to incomparable growth? Under the surface still. Growth, success, surprise, step by step into the abyss, but never failure. Never stop letting the line out. Balanced upon a single steel cable attached to one crumbling chimney and the moon, carefully laid one step at a time.
The stairs may never lead anywhere but up.
But up.
The stars are still visible despite the neon on Main Street. Despite the cell phones and their text messages, surveys, and advertisements promising to make us perfect. Because we’re failures. But the moon is there every night. Lighting pebbles. Showing the way.
I wrote almost as much on her paper as she did, then included a poem. And a picture. That one sentence burned into my head. This student, a child still, really. And already branded, lost but certain of where she was supposed to be. That one sentence, and the fact that she did turn in the paper. She thought the paper was crap. And then she read my picture, and she skipped her next class to think about it.
She met me after school. She wants to rewrite the paper.
she wants to rewrite the paper
never walked
the prescribed path
of least resistance,
tossed recipes
out windows,
burnt cookies
laced with cardamom
anyway,
kitchen disasters
anecdotes, metaphors
for middle school
social catastrophe,
high school plunge —
paths never merging
in the same direction
inedible creations,
mothers of middle
school girls afraid
of contagious exceptions,
teachers whose pointed
grades pained,
pinned butterflies
still twitching
impressions
pressed too deeply
into soft tissue –
malleable form
distorted
into commonplace,
into conformity
or the illusion
of chameleonic
necessity
if –
the story gets to change
when chameleons
stand their ground,
certain their own stripes
are well earned,
beautiful;
then flowers
can reach the sunlight
to blossom
unusual colors, spotted
weeds by textbooks,
but discovered by gardeners
as promise
the stories we tell
ourselves
are only
one perspective,
limited
to the pictures
we can imagine
tomorrow
(this first appeared in my chapbook, encircled [Prolific Press, 2016])
