The Letter

Dad makes Valentine's Day worth it
despite the drowning flood of choking chocolate hearts.
Dad reminds, subtly, of passions behind the heart that beats to one rhythm
alone.
Dad remembers his daughter is a teacher,
and that she wants to be everything he was
to her,
to others,because he taught her all her life.
She wants to remember the people,
it's the people that matter,
it's the people she wants to look at,
not herself.
Still, he reminds her of who he's helped shaped her to be,
and she feels like herself again,
today, even if for a minute, even if she forgets,
he'll remind her again in his own way.

Sunday Nap

Sunlight dancing on old carpet.
3:00 Sunday. Still sick and aching with leftover flu.
Ready for leftover muscle pain from a run.
The left knee laughs as it aches too.


New music tries in vain to bring sleep.
On my side. On my back. No help.
My stomach cramps up for no apparent reason,
as if it could ask, demanding an answer, what is going on
outside the world of this sunny apartment with a sick girl inside?
That question, falling and rising again, just before dreaming, stirring a million others.

It is quiet,
yesterday’s tasks tucked away,
resting in corners of her mind.
The papers sent. She writes remembering she’s in school again.
Strange how the comfort of learning wraps her heart warm.
Always showing a new tilt the world has.
Sometimes she could sit in a hard plastic seat for the rest of her life
(sometimes she thinks)
just to learn.
Of course she would have no friends.

A teacher curled in a quilt wants to be sixteen
or at camp. In bed sick trying to remember
what’s its like to be a little girl playing outside.
That path in her mind--wooded, sunny, warm with wind and so many green leaves.
So she writes looking for the way there,
or at least looking for the voice to bring it back.