The Protector

I am the eldest daughter.
I will protect my sister
Will everything I have.
I will sit in my room
And cry,
Not because our choir director
Destroyed my joy in singing,
But because he is stealing
Her confidence and joy
And I can't stand
In-between her
And that bullet.
I will encourage friends,
I will bolster hope,
Even if I have to lie
Through my teeth
That it will be alright
Because if I don't
I haven't tried hard enough,
Haven't bled enough,
To keep those I care about
Far, far away from any pain.
I will hide my own sorrows,
My own concerns,
Because they are burdens
I do not wish upon myself
So how could I wish them
Upon my friends?
Thus I protect
And refuse to be protected.
But slowly,
I'm coming to realize
Just how unprotected
I have made myself live.

If ice cream warms
The cockles of my heart,
What does that say
About the temperature of that part?

I have terrible form
When I run
But I don't care.

I'm not trying
To win any races anymore.
Now I run for joy.

I run for the joy
Of those few seconds in the air
With the wind in your face
And heart loving each moment.

Legs stretched out
To take as much ground as possible,
I will run because I love to

My Dance Teacher

He's like an uncle,
Or that family friend
That somehow became one of yours.
He looks out for me
Even as he teaches me.
He's not just a teacher,
That much is clear.

I keep him laughing;
It's the least I can do.
And like a proper uncle,
He makes me laugh in return,
One who won't let me escape
Without words of wisdom
That I'll carry with me all year.

Holding on too hard
To what I must let go
And forgetting
What I must remember.

After 7 years,
I finally
Saw a vista
That made me
Fall just a little
In love
With this city.

This city,
I've resisted
With all my might,
Flinging its grasp
Back into the night
Of my pain.

But today,
In the fading dim,
Through all the stress
And annoyance of the day,
Coming over that weak hill
To see the small skyline
Against the sky,
That was a small,
Small,
Comfort.

I'm tripping over
My own two feet
In my race
To get back home,
Back to school.

Plato and Dance

My dance teacher got me talking
and now I have to somehow try to write out
everything I’m thinking
because I can’t fit it all into a text.

Dance is incredible.
I hope you know this
and have experienced it for yourself.
Because there are moments
where I am not me.
I’m more than me. I am
that movement in
that moment in
those notes
and it is something Beautiful and beyond me.

I am reaching for Plato’s Form of the Beautiful
in those moments in dance when I can forget me.
I’m leaving his cave
without being blinded by the brilliance
that cast those shadows on the wall,
because I am more than human
in those moments I forget what the false, evil, and ugly are
.
I cannot,
however,
reach for the Good and True by forgetting.
For that,
I must remember
and learn to turn towards those Forms.
And there are ways I reach for the Beautiful by remembering.

But there’s nothing so like forgetting
I am a mortal tied to Earth
that helps me reach for that universal Beauty.
It’s not contained inside me,
I know that.
It’s out there,
a universal unconcerned with what’s popular or new,
because it’s BBFs with what is Good and True for always and forever.
And when I dance I can touch it.

That thought is so wonderful.

And so terrifying…

Let me share things with you,
And you with me.
I want more rapport,
More talk.
But maybe I'm just begging a wall
To walk towards me.
I'll have more clues
Once ten days
Have come and gone.

I can endue
Any pain thrown at me
But one.

Lonliness?
Ha! I have Psalms 4.
Rejection?
Ha! I have Romans 8:38-39.
No aches,
No groans,
No scars etched on the mind
Hold me down
Strong enough to keep my hands
From the Light.

Only because I still have the power
To forget.
With the Logos,
I remember the Good;
I remember the True.

But with dance
I move towards the Beautiful
For I forget me.
I can let go
Of all the aches and pains
And reach for Beauty.

So to lose dance,
To lose the place where I forget,
And in that forgetting become more
Than human,
To lose dance is the one thing
I could not endure,
The greatest fear
That seeps its way
Into nightmares and daydreams.

Cars Tell Secrets

I can tell who I am
By my car,
Even now,
After only a summer with her.
The cassette tapes resting proudly
In any crevice,
Bearing the Beach Boys, Billy Joel,
And the Police for all eyes and ears
To enjoy like I do.
A beach towel lies in the back seat
With a hardy pair of sunglasses
And an over-chlorinated watch.
One golden, suede-sole shoe
Lies on the passenger seat,
Her sister fell off next to the umbrella
And giant roll of duct tape.
I find the empty can of Arizona tea
Very telling.

The car that belongs to my father
Tells more about my sister,
What with the apple stickers
Over the driving wheel
And sheet music scattered over every
Space in the car for passengers
And mixed with work schedules.
His only trace is found in the radio stations,
Aside from the setting for the classical one,
And the window stickers for his alma mater.
His presence is drowned out by the extra clothes
Covered in grass, blue paint, and mud,
Especially the ragged tennis shoes.
Not to mention,
The seat is pulled way close to the wheel.

So close,
To so much.
To the end of a summer,
The end of work season.
So close
To the beginning of school,
Hopefully a new job.
So close
To saying a painful goodbye,
To finding joyful hellos.