Yiayoula

I miss you.

Three simple words, dripping with the heavy weight of time. You made me smile whenever I was in your arms, O Sweet Comfort! Generous Warmth and Unfeigned Love! Your withered hands made my mouth water with the artwork you created in the kitchen. Your melodious voice made childrens’ fairytales come alive as we nibbled on sunflower seeds and watched the sun set.

You grew weak. A fall here, a stroke there. Your bones became brittle. And yet you stayed proud, a stubborn champion.  

Five years ago today you traveled to where I could not follow. Behind you, emptiness. No more stories. No more.

An Italian phrase, a Greek sob, an American pat on the back was all that I knew that day. I had passed my oral presentation in Italian! Subject: You. I grew emotional half way through and got most of my class crying right with me. But that was all I knew that day. A quick trip to the Mother Counrty, a pretense. “Just to see how She is doing,” she said. Concentrate on your finals, she thought. And I had to concentrate on my finals.

It’s hard to mourn the loss of a loved one when you don’t even know they are gone. You left this world, continued on your journey. I anticipated your departure, but still I was not ready. When the news broke, I was angry. I was hurt. And then Anger and Hate left the spotlight, and the emptiness they left behind crushed me.

How do you say I Love You if they cannot hear your words? That empty space, that void.  Will your words mean anything?… Prayer, you say? I hear you need to have Faith for prayer to work its magic. 

And what about I Miss You? These three words are even more dangerous than the former. Misused and underapreciated, they make light of the undercurrent of emotion and confusion swiftly moving toward a fork in the river.

Which way the current takes you depends on how those three words are received. And if there is no one to receive them?

They are difficult to utter for fear that they will mean nothing, when in fact they mean everything in the moment they take off from your heart like sprinters at the start of a fifty-meter race, climb up your insides, pulling at everything on their way up sending your stomache into a wild spin, and eventually slip past your vocal chords to gather strength and slip over your tongue and through your lips. 

I miss you.

My student, my nemesis

In keeping with the tradition of one of my posts from several days ago, I will be writing short blurbs about my students: those who inspire me and those who defy me. Each experience is worth its weight in gold.

DT is a very smart kid. He is a small kid, with an interesting personalilty. I don’t think any of his classmates are more clever than he. He knows how to get under his teachers’ skins, even if he is rarely ever in class. When he shows, he seems to always have a plan… which almost always goes as planned, much to my dismay. Honestly, it would be funny if I weren’t teaching and other students weren’t waiting ot learn from me. Ths kid’s funny! And every time he is caught, he is quick to apologize with a very smug expression on his face, saying ”Sorry Miss. Won’t happen again” but meaning “HA – HA! I won again!” The little fart. He wouldn’t know a sincere apology if it hit him smack across the forehead. 

So I called mom tonight. She sounded upset – we shall see if our discussion will yeild any changes in his behavior. I remain optimistic given this was the first time I have been able to get through and actually speak with mom.

A story, III

A glance, a question, a raised hand, a shout, an answer. A quiz, an essay, test prep. The days passed in the same way. Whenever I was interacting directly with students, I felt alive in ways that I yearned to when I was not teaching. It felt good knowing that over one hundred and fifty teenagers relied upon me to teach them something about history, and to make it less than excruciating. I tried. Sometimes, I failed, sometimes, I succeeded. The thrill of not knowing, of having to improvise if a lesson was derailing before my eyes… that’s why I loved teaching.

But then the school day ended, and I borded the train again. Headed home. To watch a movie? Go out on a date? Get drunk? Invite a friend over and take a hit? It had been like this ever since she had left. The monotony of it. Of course, I had experienced the occasional release and subsequent euphoria. But always, my thoughts would return to her. It angered me. Why did I still feel so attached to her? Why did she star in many of my dreams and fantasies? After all, I had not known her for very long, our romance had been wild, a lot of fun, but very brief. Our affair had lasted the duration of my stay in Madrid last summer: a mere two weeks.

And yet, there she was, day after day. Night after night. I had experienced something wonderful, and now my body ached to experience it again. I had searched for it elsewhere, but to no avail. No other woman had been able to ellicit the same feelings.

Was I obsessed? How pathetic. It certainly felt like I was. Whenever I was alone, I would allow myself to sink into a daydream, always the same one: we were lying in bed next to each other… in the daydrem, the sheets were white, but in reality they had been crimson red. I wasn’t sure why I had changed that detail. We were naked. We had just finished a particularly rough episode, and were both thoroghly spent. And she lay in my arms. Did I mention we were both naked? Yes, of course I had. It was the most important detail, because I could feel her hot skin cooling against mine. She was pressed up against the length of me, and I held her waiting for our passion to ebb away on its own.

It was the last time we had made love. She had returned to her husband after my departure and I had not bothered to contact her again.

But her laughter always rang in my head, regardless of the time that had passed. It drowned out whatever conversation I was having and forced me to pay attention to it. Stop whatever I was doing to listen until it faded away. It wasn’t a particularly distinct or pleasant laugh, but it was hers.  And its persistent presence annoyed me.

I picked up a buxom blond in the grocery store as I was paying for a box of cereal. She was wearing her sweats and was purchasing some frozen dinner. I stopped her from making that purchase, took her out to dinner, got her number and walked her to her apartment on 82nd Street before kissing her on her cheek, ignoring the perplexed look on her face – Charlie? Aren’t you coming up? – No thanks Jessie, I can’t tonight. But maybe another night?, and walking the four blocks to my own apartment.

Enter doorway, stub toe, curse once, walk up stairs, jingle keys, push heavy door open, enter apartment. Feel the door close and hear the lock click, ignore the light switch, take off all clothes, push them into a pile in the center of the room, crawl into bed. Darkness. I held my breath, waiting for something to force me to open my eyes. When nothing happened after several moments, I exhaled slowly and allowed the city’s humming silence to wash over me as I drifted into sleep.

Another day, over.

A story, II

“Good morning ladies,” I chirped as I walked in to the main office of the building, making my way over to the time cards. Ms. Chedwick, a rotund woman with thick cheeks and a nice smile, looked up from her morning paperwork and a bright smile crossed over her face. Her eyes lit up behind her dark-rimmed glasses and a wide smile spread quickly accross her face, forcing her cheeks to nearly close her eyes in the effort.

“Mornin’ Charlie,” she sang out, her voice surprisingly light given her stature. It seemed for a moment that her morning was somehow made less dull by my presence. “How was your weekend, sweetheart?”

I smiled a crooked smile and told her it had been too short. The comparatively frail attendance secretary, Ms. Arkin, had allowed her eyes to follow my every move, and when I nodded in her direction before leaving the room, she quickly looked back down at the papers in her hands, busying herself with shuffling through the few that were on top. Well, I thought, these middle aged women find me appealing, that’s clear enough… but they’re not that much fun to fantasize about.

I smiled to myself as I walked out of the room and down the hallway to the staff elevator, my attendance folder in hand. I called greetings through the open office doors that passed, eventually pulling up next to the cute brown-haired English teacher from the fifth floor. Her name escaped me, but she looked up when she felt my presence next to her as we waited for the elevator, and she smiled.

“How are you doing?” I asked, trying to make small talk as we waited for the elevator. In the distance, the first bell annoucning the start of first period rang.

“Late. As always,” was her reply, although she did not seem as furstrated as her words would have allowed her to be. “Those kids are going to be waiting outside my door again, and when I walk up to them, they will give me shit for being late.”

“They certainly don’t cut us any slack when we are late,” I conceded with a sympathetic frown. Thank goodness I don’t teach first period. The elevator arrived with a sharp ding, and we entered the small space. “Five, please,” she said as I followed her in. As I was turning to hit the necessary buttons, my shoulder bag bumped her and knocked her attendance folder out of her hand. I bent down to pick up the scattered papers as the doors slid closed behind me.

Suddenly, I was very aware that we were the only two people in the elevator. “Thanks,” she said, her eyes looking up into mine as I handed the papers to her. They were a deep brown, almost black, and her dark bangs hung over one side of her face, slightly obsuring on eye. The look was playful, inviting, and I smiled in response. “I’ll be sure to knock your papers out of your hands more often if you promise to thank me like that every time I do so.” The red rushed to her face and she dropped her eyes. Had I gone too far?

The sharp ding announced our arrival on the fifth floor, and she looked up and smiled at me with as much coyness as was appropriate given the circumstances. “Have a great day,” she said as she slipped by me, the scent of her perfume trailing after her. Sweet, yet pungent. I liked it. Where had she spritzed it on this morning? As the elevator doors slid closed, I watched her figure turn the corner and disappear. I smiled and ran a hand through my hair and then over my face as if to rub the smug expression off of my face. I chuckled once before the ding announced my arrival on the sixth floor.

I was always borderline inappropriate with my female coworkers, especially when I sensed an attraction. I cherished the many innocent flirtations that had sprouted between myself and several teachers in the building over the last few years. It made the day go by faster, and added an adult sprinkling of flavor to the otherwise asexual but highly emotive experience that characterized my career interacting with high schoolers.

I made my way to my classroom, the the dark liquid eyes of English still dancing before my eyes. She was certainly attractive. Petite, with long textured hair. Too bad I didn’t know her name. Yet. I made a mental note to figure that out as soon as possible as I unlocked my door and flipped opened the lights.

The desks were somewhat scattered from the previous week’s activity. My students loved moving around the room, and genuinely seemed to have trouble sitting still for any length of time over three minutes. I had quickly learned to incorporate some sort of physical activity in almost all of my history lessons, especially for those students who had severe attention deficit problems.  

I moved to my desk, unpacked my computer, and began to set up for the days’ lessons. Student laughter floated in through the open door, and I stopped to listen to it for a moment. The string of explatives that followed wiped the smile off of my face as I shook my head. I hated it when my students used such langauge in the classroom, and most refrained from doing so in my presence. But there was little I could do to stop the profanity in the hallways, and students often looked at me as though I had ten heads if I asked them not to sure those words in the hallways.

The hallways of this school were no-man’s land. Anarchy reigned supreme regardless of who was supervising the halls. Even the uniformed policemen that regularly patrolled stayed clear of the hallways in between class periods, when doors opened and sutdents flooded the narrow walkways to their next class, or their next high.    

As I continued to organize the room, I realized that today felt different for some reason. I leaned my palms against a desk, bowed my head and inhaled deeply, feeling my shoulders spread as the stale air filled me to my stomache. Something had been off about the morning, but I could not quite put my finger on it. Whatever it was made my stomache turn. After I’d replayed the morning in my head - extending the interaction with English so as to appreciate her soft features one last time – I shrugged, not knowing what it was that had made me uneasy. I had business to attend to before my students arrived. I imagined them coming into my classroom, eager, ready with sharpened pencils and crisp new notebooks for a day full of learning, and grinned at my own wistfull hope as I set up the room. You wouldnt’ know what to do with yourself if they did all of that, Charlie! 

I was still grinning to myself when the bell rang, marking the end fo first period and the start of my day as a high school teacher.

A story, I

Her laughter echoed in my mind as I pulled my body out of bed. Another alarm, another day to navigate. Dragging my bare feet across the hardwood floor, I left my bed behind, unmade. An unmade bed always looks more inviting at the end of the day, and it’s easier to crawl into.

I rubbed my eyes with one hand as I leaned against the door frame for support. It was still so real… that sonorous laughter of hers. And annoying. I shook my head to dismiss the memory as I worked my way into the bathroom, clearing my throat with a flemmy cough.

It would be interesting at work today, I thought as I ran cold water over my hands and then brought them up to my face. For a moment, I paused to watch my face in the mirror as water trickled along the musculature of my jaw, then over my lips, around my coarse chin and into the sink below. I looked tired, and I needed to shave. But not today. I liked the way I looked with a few days’ of stubble decorating my otherwise boring face. I pulled out my toothbrush and sqeezed a small dallop of toothpaste onto it and stopped, staring at my tootbrush. Funny. Before her, I used to sqeeze a thick mess of toothpaste onto my toothbrush. I began to brush my teeth, all the while staring at my reflecting in the mirror. My eyes stared back from under the mess of black hair that sat atop my head.

Getting ready for work had become mindlessly routine. Every morning as I ate my Raisin Bran cereal, I would always think about my bed. I loved sleeping in it. The morning was by far the best time of day to sleep, when a few rays of light made their way through the curtains and you were temporarily brought to a state of semi-consciousness. Right before your alarm went off. But I had chosen a profession which required me to be on my feet, fully functional and interacting with people before 8 am.  The early morning were the only truly difficult part about educating youth. The rest of it came naturally, and was certainly a lot more fun than waking up at 5:30 in the morning.

Out of the apartment, lock the door, jingle the keys, down the stairs, out of the building, around the corner, three blocks south, descend into the subway, swipe the card, wait for the train, enter the train, find a seat, and relax. For forty minutes. 

Today, I sat forward instead of leaning back to switch things up. My elbows rested against my knees. I ran my hands through my hair which danced messily about my face. She had liked running her hands through my hair. She had liked pulling on it, too. I smiled at the memory, its implicit heat still palpable despite being months old. I realized with a chuckle that my pants were growing steadily tighter, and knew that I had to start thinking about something else.

The rhythmic noise of the train car filtered into my conscious as I begin to feel the presence of other bodies pushing against mine on the seat. I focused my gaze upon the legs of the woman sitting accross the isle from me. She was wearing dark brown loafers with black stockings, and a gray wool skirt. I didn’t have time to look up to see her blouse or her face before an empty coke bottle under her seat caught my eye. I watched it bob gently from side to side as the train made its way along the tracks, occasionally bumping the feet of some passenger before sliding noiselessly down the car.

A typical morning in the subways of New York.  I was bored already.

My students, my inspiration

Ok, so this is not necessarily a blog about teaching, but it is a blog about inspiration, and often, my students are purely inspirational. So occasionally, I will post a small blurb about one of them (the initals will always be changed and some facts will be blocked with an “X” to protect student privacy). 

TK (10th grade girl) recited a poem of hers to me the other day, a love poem. It took my breath away – I’m going to have to ask her to email me a copy of it. She recited this poem after reading another one she had written in a beat up journal about how trapped she feels in her own home. This was after she showed me several deep scratches in her shoulder that had been caused by her X hitting her with an umbrella. “Miss, I just want to be better than what people expect of me. I am going to get out of the projects.”

New York Real Estate

As I am in the midst of moving to Manhattan, I have come to this conclusion about real estate in NYC: it is as exciting and as heartbreaking as dating is in this city.

Whether or not you choose to work with a broker, you usually begin your search on Craigslist or using a newspaper. Reading through the endless postings, circling or emailing to yourself the various posts that appeal to you, etiher because of their location, qualities or cost.

We all have a vague idea of what we are looking for, and know what looks good to us on paper. Some apartments look like they would make great long-term homes, while others compel us to explore what they have to offer simply because they have one great quality that we find appealing. For these types of aparmtents, we are willing to sacrifice with the understanding that this sacrifice is temporary.

And this is just the beginning. Then comes the First Date. If you’ve hired a broker, you can expect to pay a certain fee for them to initiate several first dates, just as you would on many internet dating sites… “for services rendered.” After you’ve dabbled a little, you start to learn more and more about what you really want or do not want in your next apartment.

Slowly, you become more emotionally invested in the task as it becomes personal. Choosing an apartment reflects you – your taste, your hopes, fears, likes, dislikes, perhaps even your dreams – in the present.  

And then there’s competition. You see an apartment you like – you walk in after seeing so many others and being disappointed by them that when you first walk in to this one, you let out a sign of relief and everything about that aparmtent is wonderful – and by the time you (and your broker, if you have one) walk to the office to sign some papers, you discover that someone else has beaten you to the punch. It’s heartwrenching and frustrating. Like being broken up with for another person for no other reason than: “you didn’t move fast enough to keep me.”

So, after going through several such “break ups,” if you are still in the running, you eventually DO sign a lease, and it is the most exicting moment. The moment before reality, a sacred place where possibility is not tempered by reality, where dreams can run wild and unchecked if one is not careful. It is the honeymoon phase of the relationship. 

If after you move in to your apartment and have been living there for a few months you find yourself still in the honeymoon phase, you have a winner. Either you are kicking yourself for only singing a year lease and dreading the increase in rent in X amount of months, or you are patting yourself on the back, confident in yourself, happy that you planned this one well, knowing that you made a great decision. 

Because breaking up with an aparmtent after you’ve signed a lease and before that lease expires can be as furstrating, painful, and costly as breaking up with someone who does not undertand why you need to leave.

Thankful

I am thankful for the warmth and love of my parents.

I am thankful for having so many beautiful people in my life. 

I am thankful for having a younger brother who may one day bring peace to a corner of our world.

I am thankful for witnessing the election of Barack Obama, and believe in his promise of hope. 

I am thankful for the full feeling in my belly.

I am thankful for my body: for being able to run my fingers over the keyboard to feel its smooth surface, for being able to watch a movie on television, for being able to listen to music and smell the bakery from afar… for being a woman.

I am thankful for my health, the health of those I love, and their happiness.

I am thankful for having the courage to be spontaneous and impulsive.

I am thankful for my education.

A really long rant about school culture

I am a second year teacher at an inner city school in the Bronx. There are plenty of wonderful blogs out there about teaching, its heartaches and rewards. One such blog is http://southbronxschool.blogspot.com/, which is horrible in is truth, but also very entertaining. One of my coworkers and best friends is also writing a WordPress blog of our experience, which you can find at http://184days.wordpress.com/. This last blog is exquisitely written, and is a very raw and personal account of what the teaching experience is like for some people.

My first several posts (which I have imported from another blog of mine) below elaborate upon specific experiences I had as a first year teacher at the same school in which I work this year. We were required to write about these “moments” for our graduate school class, and I simply copied and pasted them into a blog I started last year but did not continue after I completed the fall semester and consequently, did not need to write about such moments for a grade. As I said in my Hello world? post, I rarely stick with something for very long as I grow restless easily.

This fall semester, I am enrolled in a graduate school class which asked us in early September to examine the culture of the school that we work in using surveys and observation, etc. Ever since I wrote that paper, I have noticed a fundamental shift in my attitude toward my school. Specifically, my eyes have been opened to the roaring tension that is only escalating between the administration and the staff at my school. How I could not have been sensitive to it last year is beyond me. I refuse to believe that I am getting jaded because my relationship with my students is still very rewarding and I still love what I do with all of my heart. I have amazing co-workers who make me all the more excited about going to work in the morning.

But I am witnessing a very different staff-administration relationship this year which is toxic to the learning environment at my school. It is no secret that the staff at X High School are terrified and resentful of their principal, let’s call him/her The Crown (TC for short). TC runs a tight ship. Its numerous staff are kept under video surveillance meant to help monitor the hallways for safety’s sake. More than once, I have heard rumors of a staff member being called in to the administration’s office because they have done something wrong and the video cameras caught them in the act. They are pulled into the office to “discuss issues,” and then are confronted with the video evidence.

Staff do as they are told not because they want to do it for the students (because a lot of what we are asked to do does NOT benefit our students, but simply makes the school look better to superficial observation), but because they are afraid to be reprimanded or to receive a “letter in their file.” This letter is a scare tactic which is overused by TC and our administration. As per our union agreement with the DOE, teachers are allowed 10 absences during the school year without jeopardizing their standing at a school. As per TC, if you are absent more than 5 times, you receive a letter in your file. Last year, I received a good letter in my file for my participation in a school event that TC wants to get more staff to attend. A month later, at the end of the school year, many of the staff – including myself – received a (bad) letter in our file because we failed to attend a workshop organized for professional development within our building. I am not sure about why a majority of my other colleagues did not attend this workshop, but I genuinely forgot and instead, reported to my usual hall monitoring assignment for the duration of that period. As a result, all of us who neglected to attend this workshop received letters which called us “unprofessional and insubordinate,” among other rude things. It was the first time I personally felt affronted by the administration, and even though I was quick to address the issue with TC, it still left me with a very sour taste in my mouth. I have been told, repeatedly, that this administration will not hesitate to smile to your face, and stab you in the back 40 times the minute you let your guard down. It does not matter how much you do for the school. You could be teacher of the year one month, and on TC’s hit list the next.

And yet, besides that letter, I have never been reprimanded by the administration. They have been nothing but good to me, and I have a wonderful relationship with my own department administrator. Being favored does not make working at X High School any easier, though, because of all of the whisperings and rumors of what is being done to other staff members. That could be me. It’s a lot of pressure to fly under the radar – even in a school as big as X High School – while doing what is right by my students.

This brings me to school culture. TC has built a wonderful facade at our school, and has everyone from the DOE to some staff members – and maybe even itself – fooled into thinking that the school is a place where learning takes place and where student performance is improving. Far from it. And yes, as teachers, we like to complain about lack of parental involvement and student apathy or disrespect (or both). But there is more to education than the student-teacher relationship. The process of education requires money, ambition, parental involvement, student attendance, respect, trust, dedication and honesty. The DOE and administration at X High School provide the first two; it is difficult to affect parental involvement without enforcing teacher-student communication and establishing a culture of parental accountability, neither of which our school does; and it is difficult to inspire students to attend class for the sake of learning without the last several qualities on the list above, which our school as a whole lacks.

Our school’s mission statement says that X High is a place that prepares students for college with a quality education which fosters academic success and personal growth through a program of academics, arts and athletics. X High School claims to prepare students to become well-rounded and productive citizens, and its success is attributed to its academically rigorous curriculum across all content areas. We have received a “B” on the city progress report (a way for the DOE to grade schools and compare them to similar schools in the city), and earlier this year, the Quality Review (an intense and “comprehensive” analysis of how a school operates which helps the DOE identify problem schools) smiled favorably upon X High School. So our school sounds good and looks like it is improving.

It promises its students a lot, but is failing to follow through. Our school is failing those who it serves.

My colleagues and I work closely together as our students’ four core subject teachers. All of our eighty or so special education students travel among the four of us as the period bells ring through the school day. Every day, the four of us meet to discuss our students’ progress and address issues in our Academy (House). Since the beginning of the year, poor student behavior has made all us of feel awful at least once if not more. Their IEPs highlight issues ranging from emotional and learning disabilities, to attention disorders, physical impairments, etc. Of eighty students, about fifteen have presented themselves as persistent behavior problems, at times making getting through a lesson impossible. 

At X High, poor behavior is addressed using a set hierarchy of action, starting with a private discussion with the student, a phone call home to the parent, parent-teacher-student conferences, calling in your department administrator, guidance referrals, detention/suspension/ other disciplinary school-based action, etc.   

We have followed school protocol for the last several months, and nothing has worked because it (1) is not enforced by parents/ other teachers who are not part of the House, (2) lacks consistency, (3) is not addressed/ taken seriously, among other reasons. No matter what the four of us do in our classrooms, the fact of the matter remains that our students spend a lot of time out in the hallways of the school… where school rules about lateness are not enforced and the teacher is forced to shoulder the burden of a lesson continually interrupted by knocks on her door from students finally arriving to class… where if a student curses out a agent of discipline (a dean) they are suspended, but if they curse out or threaten a teacher, little is done… where administrative expectations of students is so low or TC’s need to raise passing rates is so great that teachers have been forced to create credit recovery assignments for students who are failing which ensures they will pass regardless of how much work they have completed throughout the marking period… where students have to take five exams in one day so that the school “keeps up attendance.” Low expectations, lack of rule enforcement, overcrowded classrooms, lack of communication and consequences, overworked and under-appreciated teachers… 

Recently, I have organized meetings among us, our students’ other teachers, counselors and administrators to address the behavior issues that are not getting better despite our best efforts. In response to our efforts to address student behavior that is preventing or slowing down the process of education in our classrooms, I was warned by colleagues not to rock the boat too much. “TC is all about keeping its hold on power, and that includes sabotaging any positive relationships that develop among staff members for the purpose of improving student performance.” “The administrator who sat in on your meeting the other day and whose involvement you are so excited about could have been sent to spy on you and your co-workers for TC.” “Be prepared to face the music if you call attention to yourself by complaining or creating more work for the administration.” “Don’t trust anything that is said to your face.”

How can progress be made if, even BEFORE we take our ideas up the ladder, we are being warned by colleagues to lay low? I refuse to believe that progress would be sabotaged simply because teachers working together for the good of their students represent a threat to TC. If that is the case, and our efforts to involve others outside our House for our students are thwarted, then all of the rumors and experiences that my colleagues have spoken about will be legitimized and reinforced. No matter how true the warnings ring, I refuse to let them prevent me from trying to do what is right by my students, and to deliver on the school’s promise to them.

The impenetrable safe (prose)

I was once in love with a man. 

He used to be my heart, my life, my breath, and then a tiny seed of doubt was laid lightly next to my heart’s aorta. Imperceptible at first, this little seed sprouted and its tiny roots began to cling to my heart for sustenance, encircling the aorta like a python does its prey. Slowly, the seed grew. So we called in a weed-whacker and ended our relationship, but the weed-whacker did not do a good job of completely uprooting that little seed. He forgot to take with him one thin tendril of root still clinging to my heart. 

Three and a half years together. Three and a half years of memories, love, laughter, tears, soft hands, passion, warmth. Family. Friends. A blue mole, a belly button ring. Legs wrapped around a naked waist, deep brown eyes, golden hair. These wonderful, heart-pumping memories were all I was left with, and they are beautiful memories. The remaining tendril drew strength from these life-sustaining memories and slowly it grew, unbeknownst to me.

Memories are fragile.  

Three and a half years plus one year and four months. A mutual decision, a push, a shove, a new relationship. A visit, a rejection. You wanted me, and I was blind to your need. One year and four months later, a small chip in the bone turned jagged break. Ripping and tearing slowly at the sinews and muscles around it, I come undone as it leisurely shoves its way to the surface, now protruding through the Mask for all to see. How ugly. How pitiful. Who am I?

Unrequited love! I am engulfed by the flames of your throes. You hear me cry, you watch me wither. You sit there. You watch me cry, you feel me crumble. And yet you sit there still. How could you witness the collapse of someone you once loved and want to keep up the slow torture?

You are cruel to tell me you still care! An ax plunging, a machete whacking, a sickle slicing. And my heart skips a beat to the sweet honey slipping through your lips, sweet and warm… I am oblivious to the threat. I welcome your words, I seek your words. I imagine your tongue tapping against the roof of your mouth, undulating sensuously “I still care about you.” That sweet honey – suddenly sticking to me, glued to my skin, solidifying into an inviting yet impenetrable golden shield that none have been able to break through. Several have tried, and they have been good men, but none came prepared with the pick ax. 

How dare you! You have trapped my heart in the cage of your words, the possibility they promise yet fail to deliver. You are embedded in who I am. For a year and four months. Why are you fighting to keep me in your life? No answer. 

A party with friends, lots of fake socializing. Your eyes followed me? I was putting on a show for you alone. No one else existed. 

It has been one year and four months. And one month since I pulled away for the last time. Withdrawal has been difficult, and I doubt it will ever truly end. I dip into those soft and sweet memories, when I once danced with you. I wrap myself in their warmth as I pull the comforter around me as I lay in bed. And I feel good. 

I want to learn how to lock those memories away and throw away the key. It is a foolish heart that resurrects the emotions of the past to pacify the hopeless dreams of the future.  How much does an impenetrable safe cost? Do I owe more time before I can fill it, lock it, cradle it, then shove it into the darkest recess of my heart and throw away the key?