The best compliment I have ever received

"You give hugs with your personality."

Not a Haiku

Your freaking eyes.

And entropy will cease to reign.

Someday, I'm going to live this holiday right.
We're going to fast. We're going to serve. We're going to invite other people over and say our grateful things in one eternal round.
Once, we're going to visit that great big city to see those great big balloons. Lots of times, we'll stay home and play football in the yard. We'll rake the rest of the leaves and play in them, if it's not too cold.
We'll talk about Thanksgivings past and Christmas to come, and we'll tickle each other, right down to our toes.
I will not say what will not be there. Just that, someday soon, we're going to live this holiday right.

Brought beneath Big Lots on Thanksgiving Day

There's a blinking orange neon light above, on a brown, brown building.
But it's not the brown of turkeys and gratitude; it's the brown of dirt and reconciliation and just maybe the ambition I need.
The exclamation point gave out a long time ago, and the "t" is tiring now.
I want to go home, but I don't know where that is. I wonder if I can be strong again.
And somewhere back in my mind, in a place half cynical and a quarter wise, is the admonition to get the "I' out of those sentences.
It is only later that the realization comes: maybe if my neon light burns out, something brighter will shine.

Roommate, Friend

I think I told the whole story to my oatmeal.
But you didn't care for the glare in my blue eyes
And instead saw into my heart.

Thank you.

Thanksgiving

I am grateful for the girl with the red hair and snickerdoodles, the old man on Tiffany's bus, the boy with warm hands, the far-away one who knows the septic tank story, the people in the newsroom that needs kittens, the mother who likes giraffes, the roommates with artful heads
and also everyone.

Insert appropriate song lyric here

In a moment of impatience and memory and temptation and almost tears, I can not, or do not, look at the picture on the wall. Instead, my eye falls to a drawing posted on the side of Emily's dresser. For moments before I realize it, I am staring at the glitter-written word, "forever."

645 (I'll-be-cursed-if-I-call-them-anything-but) glorious days remain.

The movement from evening to even later morning

Classy country songs come quiet on the radio as I drive through the deserted downtown of this town. In a minute or a mile, at least a little while, I will have to not hit college students who brave any weather for that but never think to walk this way in the day. Who could say what they will learn tonight, or which light they will miss when the morning's sun comes? Mostly, I am too old for them, and it is strange for a minute to realize I am one of them. Because in this brain are a thousand swirling thoughts and a casi constant thread of truth like a news track across the bottom of a TV screen, but on the outside, besides the scarf and an inch or two of modesty, I am only a girl who wants someone to love her - someone here, right now - even though she knows better.

Peace

The silence
Of the deep night
Is so much older than me.

Waking Up to Dream Again

All but one of the seats in the on-second-thought luxurious gray car have no present people in them. This makes just enough room for no radio and the glossy water drops on the windowpane in the nighttime, which all of a sudden have a dare-it-be cognizant beauty because of what they might have meant for the future all those years and shedded snake skins of persons ago. And might mean again, or might be found to have always have meant.

This sidewalk is made both for the splattering, dignified pitter-pattering of the raindrops after a thoughtful fall bad-weather day, and the steady step of this black dress shoe. 

And I walk beneath the stars you can't see tonight, and know with a bone-strengthening certainty that they are there and always will be. And that, whether or not he chooses to give them to me, they are mine to have. This is the part where the eyelashes flutter, and I wake up to dream again.

Several quick poems churned out like letters of words in a spelling bee, instead of nervous fingers drumming the table

Una oportunidad

Esperanza

Momento

¿Qué es el reto?

¿Qué es la meta?

Ahora.

Aquí.

___

A boar's head

On the wall.

Too many frames.

Never enough fame

To go around.

 ___

The humor

frustration breeds

is not anything

I want near me.

_____

What do you say to someone, in any language, when their father has been kidnapped?

The Unwanted Half of an Eddy

There are a thousand reasons why 9/11 scared us. But more than the attack on our national pride, the airport security ramifications and the vulnerability felt by so many, what should weigh heaviest on our hearts are the thousands dead, the thousands injured and the thousands of mourning friends and family left behind.

By most counts, 9/11 is the deadliest terrorist attack in modern history. The service at ground zero in the morning, the events on campus tomorrow night and the countless events happening around the country and world this week commemorate that. Let us take this an opportunity to mourn those 3,000 lost lives — and all the innocent lives taken by violent acts throughout the world. 

Because of the massiveness of its atrocity — and because it happened here — 9/11 can overshadow the acts of terrorism that are constantly occurring. 

The University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database lists 730 terrorism attacks other than the Sept. 11 bombings reported between Aug. 1 and Nov. 1, 2011. Hundreds died, in just those three months, in minor and major incidents in India, Switzerland, Algeria, Sri Lanka, Russia — everywhere. 

Terrorism happens every day. If it’s not an attack on a business or government building, a bomb in a subway or an assassination of a leader, it’s destruction of private property. 

In addition to all that, so many of our soldiers — and soldiers from the United Nations, the U.K. and every nation that has a force that works to promote peace — operate in environments of terror every day, trying to make the world a better place. 

Putting an end to fear and violence takes those soldiers. It takes government diplomats. It takes every single one of us, doing the very best we can to swallow our pride and animosity and xenophobia, every single day. 

A real war on terror has no start and end dates. 

A Spanish class assignment, turned blog post

Cuando estaba en Londres durante el verano, saqué la foto siguiente. Tengo muchas más mejoras fotos de la catedral de San Pablo, pero quiero decirle lo que veo en esta que causa que la me gusta.

Veo las personas en la calle, la familia y las profesionales – todos extraños – caminando como si no exista la estructura grande sobre su nivel. Compartan una calle, y probablemente mucho más, pero sus conversaciones solamente centran en el día hermoso y los asuntos de trabajo. Caminan bajo de una sombra de Dios, mientras que Dios le mira y con cariño le permite que caminan en pasos sencillos.  

Los dos edificios en la calle son altos, pero no son bastante altos que pueden comparar con el catedral. La catedral es enmarcada por los edificios – centros comerciales o apartamentos, como sean.  La torre de la catedral aumenta al cielo, que aparece blanco – y roba, casi, la torre de su esplendor. 

La foto sí muestra la catedral, pero con sólo un susurro de su grandiosidad. Esto es por qué me gusta.

View from the top of the Ball Memorial Hospital employee parking garage

Sometimes, beauty depends on what you choose to see.

I swore I wouldn't count, but:

729.

Process: the hard part of healing

I can't wait!
I can't.... Wait.
I can't wait.

Why Expensive Jewelry is Unnecessary

I would wear a cereal box ring every day, if you gave it to me.

A Tourist's Dilemma

I take a picture of you.
And then what?
Then you are witnessed, done, checked off the list, covered.
No.
Then you are missed.
Seen, maybe, but not understood.
No matter how clear that camera is, a world lived through a lens looks wrong.

Not Quite Carrie Underwood

Dear French Boy from the Toronto Airport,
I don't need anything from you.

But when that boy across the bar
leans into that girl just like that,

I think maybe I do.

7/21/12, Air Canada Check-in Line

I ask the friendly boy in front on me where he's heading and he doesn't understand. "Going" is a better word for this young man, who has a great French accent but doesn't know much English. He's from France, and he's heading home now to Leon.

His blue eyes sparkle, and I realize I don't even know where Leon is. Or how to spell it.

Airports are exactly that.

Did you know

The rising sun makes the sky shimmer
If you put some trees in front.

Construction work aside, everything looks the same and oh, how I've missed it.

“So you’re home for the summer, then?”

“Yep,” I reply, “I guess.” But home has become a complicated thing. And I can’t help but answer that question a little uncertainly.

When I find myself speaking of my college dorm room and calling it home – while standing in the middle of my family’s house, toes tucked in the carpet of the very room that throughout high school was the only place I thought would ever deserve that name - it seems perhaps I ought to be more careful with my words.

I wonder how firm my grasp on the concept of home was in the first place, if two semesters away could shake it. I wonder too why this house doesn’t seem to feel betrayed at hearing another’s name uttered within its walls.

Maybe this house knows what a year at college has made me notice – as humans, we do a really good job of making ourselves at home.  Thrown into a campus of new people and unfamiliar surroundings, millions of college students every year find friends, stick posters on walls, and hear themselves talking about stopping by “home” between classes. Apartments and dorms become safe, normal, good home bases, even without our mothers and memories living there.

I expected college to get comfortable – what I didn’t expect was that living there would continue to feel real, that even after the dorm walls were stripped, wardrobe emptied, floor mopped and door locked, that empty room I used to share would still have some pull on my heart.     

People ask me about being home for the summer and don’t expect their words to trigger two different sets of thoughts and feelings. Bloomington is home; it always will be in the ways of roots and beginnings and returns. But it feels different now – not only because I’ve been to Ball State and seen how it is to live in the Muncie community, but because now I know it’s not the only place I can belong.

When people told me that Bloomington would be better when I came back, or at least that leaving it would make me better able to appreciate its nuances, they were right. What they didn’t make me realize when I set out to leave this town was that I’d be entering another one – and that I’d come to love its quirky downtown shops and one-way streets almost as much as these.

Growing up is about learning to understand how big the world is and - if you do it right - letting your heart and soul and mind grow to match its size.  

This summer I expect to smile and nod and think of my mother and the color my brother painted my bedroom when people making small talk ask me about being home for these months. Then in the fall I’ll go home to one room in a hallway of twenty identical ones and, until the friends and classes that make it seem real come round, wish I hadn’t had to leave this one so soon.

Maybe Not Everything

Yesterday a politician who preys on people's panic played up partisanship and let people put him in a place where he and they both know somewhere deep down he shouldn't be.

And the woman at the BMV, who wore a tag saying "ASST Manager" said "shhh" and turned her head, asking almost encouragingly if I wanted to write a less than $4300 price on the form for the title of my new car to pay less taxes.

I didn't. Someone's got to pay her salary.

She knows that, too. Just like all those people know voting lasts longer than the sticker they give you and a pressed button.

Don't tell me that's the question everybody asks

The following is paraphrased from a passage in journalist John Gibler's book, "To Die in Mexico."

A 69-year-old Mexican man living in Ciudad Juarez got sick of people dumping dead bodies around his house. He put up a sign that said "PROHIBITED: Littering and dumping corpses." It didn't matter. In the 23 months that followed, he found four more dead bodies. Then, in Oct. 2008, in the middle of the day, a group of men shot him as he stood on his doorstep. Two months later, they killed his daughter, dumping her body beneath the "prohibited" sign. A day later, the daughter's sister and friend were walking in the dead daughter's funeral procession. Armed men killed them both, shooting more than 20 bullets from AK-47s into their bodies. In order, the names of the family members killed are: Francisco Maria Sagredo Villarreal, Cinthia Sagredo Escobedo, and Ruth Sagredo Escobedo. 

I do not understand.

My parents taught me to respect the neighbors, to leave the dog alone when the sign said so, to play nice with the kids down the street, to leave alone the lines the fence drew. What parents, what people in this world, could raise children who murder? And not just murder, but murder like that? And children whose reactions, when faced with a simple man's sign that tells them what they're doing is wrong on so many levels, is to do it all the more, and even worse?

Do not tell me that's just the way it is. That their parents were probably high on the very drugs that pay for their children's guns. Or that they didn't have the Church, and it's such a shame, and whatever.

Do not try to answer those questions unless what you say is a way to make it better.

Exploration

Finding that other people
(and ourselves)
are more
(and less)
than we expect.

When Shy Flies

Look in my eyes
Know I'm alive
Don't ever deny

The presence of the sky
The color of your tie

The wrongness of this real

My Political Views

Are my own.
Leave them alone.

They are young -
Not fledgling.
They need no parents but me.

From the Space Needle

Do they know their city sparkles?

And that as they fight this night,
their electric light is one star in the sky for a hundred other eyes?

Aquí

El hombre más inteligente que conozco,

Cuando hablamos del genocidio,

Responde con eso: ¿qué sé yo?

Decisions

Journalism:
I'd ask you to let go of me.
But without my right eye, I couldn't see.

For the Sake of Freedom and Joy

Please don't ever dream of winning the lottery.

Morning (Woodworth)

The sun shines through the dining hall windowpanes.
It brushes past the curtains,
bounces off the empty tables
and illuminates a strangers face.

The young man hears his bagel blessed.
He lifts up his head.
smiles at the friend he's with,
takes a bite, and continues a day.

In this moment,
anything is possible.

Growing up, not average

Once you learn to tie your shoes
and know there's someone watching when you choose
you've done all the growing up you need to do.

Yearning, Frowning, Brown-Grass Seeing

Mom says its because I'm this age.
I suppose I shall let myself believe her.

Clarity, at Volume Dial: 18

I wonder what that moon thinks of me,
sitting here singing, all off key.

Flying, credit-free

We sing as we drive down the highway;
We roll the windows down, to test spring, to see if it will come.
It doesn't, and we don't really mind.
Time is ours, this life, this music video.
We make no requests. We sing.

Intimidation

is a two way street.

with traffic signs that face the wrong way
and tinted windows hiding glossy faces,
where windshield wipers get removed voluntarily
and turn signals are used with care.

I wish someone could know
I learned to cross this street long ago
and only wait now, wishing someone would dare
stop traffic for me there.

Here

One day,
you will miss
this
/moment
/hour
/month
/semester
/year
/fear.

Beauty

Search.
See.
Be.

How I Know that I am Loved

A red helium balloon.
A small, heart-shaped box of chocolates, also red.
Two cookies. A slice of red velvet cake.

In a pink envelope, a card not big enough to hold the cursive inside.
I am my grandma's valentine.

Fluff

There are no clouds in the sky
and even fewer when I close my eyes.

What Makes A Soul Soar

This weather (Heavenly Father)
speaks peace to my heart.

the question i never knew mama was teaching me to ask

Who do you love more:
that dress,
or your own self?

You = the fact that I think about you

You make me want to write poems.
Or pull my hair out.
Can't quite decide.

The Comfort of Walking Alone

It's not fair to say I miss you.
I don't even know you yet.
Better, perhaps, to say
I wish, one day, to miss
All that you could be.

(too quick to the trigger)

the hand that waves
and the eyes that smile
are two parts of me
that don't know how
to let each other
say the same thing

Dreams Not Meant for Sleeping

I will never forget what my hometown taught me: though classes might be cancelled and mail not delivered, today, Martin Luther King Day, is a "day on" not a day off.

The March on Washington is taught as if it's recent history, which makes it seem crazy (at least to me) to think that the famous "I Have a Dream Speech" was given a full 49 years ago. But in another way, it's crazy to think that it was given only 49 years ago. So much has changed since.

"...little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and girls as sisters and brothers."

Of all the beautiful rhetoric and passionately delivered words in the speech, this has always been the image that most stuck out to me. I imagine Dr. King penning the words in his heart, all the while seeing in his mind's eye the so-yearned for image of his sons and daughters playing tag in a backyard with children of Caucasian friends. I see him jot those words down with tears in his eyes, and then I see him deliver them, holding onto the picture of his children and infusing all his claim to it into the words issuing from his mouth.

Sometimes I think of those words when I walk among the children at the community center here in Muncie. There are white boys and black girls, and black boys and white girls, all "sitting down together at the table of brotherhood" for as simple a thing as a snack of graham crackers and grapes. Here: a scene that would have been priceless 50 years ago, viewed weekly by volunteers who don't hardly know not to take it for granted. 

Of course, not everything is fixed. The community center is in a bad part of town, and the population there appears to be predominately black. While there is no racism or anything like it among the children, sometimes I catch them subconsciously segregating themselves. I wonder about these signs, and take them as a reminder of how different things once were and how far we've come.

I also take them as a reminder to keep coming. Because being different is good and a matter of course - but being afraid of different, or threatened by different, or made prideful by differences - those are the things that are wholly unacceptable. If ever our society is challenged to accept differences again - and it is, every day - the challenges will not come looking like those Martin Luther King battled and taught us to overcome.

Which is why I think, if Dr. King could tell us something today, it would be to keep dreaming. We have had success - he'd point it out there on the playground down the street. But if we know Dr. King, if we yearn to share the energy and ideology so immortalized into this great historical figure, we won't be afraid to turn our heads to the other corner, where a homeless veteran is traumatized by PTSD, a child is kidnapped to pose for pornography, or a gay student is bullied to death.  

The problems are always going to be there. We don't need, and probably won't often have, someone to stand at podium and proclaim to the nation that the problems are real and wrong. Rare will be the moments of clarity and purpose where we can stand united together and say "we will overcome."

Yet, already, we have done some overcoming. What are we for, if not to do more?

Pretentious But True :)

To the kid in my journalism class - this is why we can't be friends.

Today I rode my bike across campus in dress shoes and pants in the snow to interview a provost. I made arrangements to be late to a class so I could curse the cold and try to get a man with too many titles to forget about his incessantly ringing cell phone and say something that didn't sound scripted. You slept in and checked Facebook.

It's not that we couldn't be friends; I think you're swell. But we can't be friends - it wouldn't work - not when this huge part of my life is something that in all truth you're just passively studying. You'd get annoyed about my having to transcribe all the time, and I couldn't fathom how you can act like that textbook is god. It wouldn't be fair for either of us.

If you want to be friends, I suggest you join a publication. Soon enough you'd know why it's insulting when said provost dismisses the journalist who just got done interviewing him with the admoniton: "don't forget to do your homework." Then you could properly rejoice with me over a well-written headline, and feel triumphant after spending too much time thinking of just the right words for a story that's only going to get read and thrown away tomorrow.

Please join a publication. Or two. If you stayed, we might finally have something substantial to base a friendship on. Until then, we'd best leave each other more or less alone. I've got stories to write.