Well, Howdy, Hoosiers! 😉
I am currently writing from Indiana; the land where all roads are straight, all fields are flat, and us New Jerseyans are quite conspicuous. We use different words (it’s soda, not pop), we eat different foods (rather difficult being a vegetarian out here), and apparently we speak in accents (I don’t even know). But I do enjoy our annual trip Westward, we get to see the cousins and grandparents and get really confused over the hour’s time difference. However, I do have a problem with the 13-hour car ride we undergo both ways–cramming 5 people, our luggage, and occasionally a dog into one vehicle is no mean feat, and not very comfortable either, but we do it and we survive and that’s how things were in the old days, children, before teleportation and holographic cell phones.
Anyway, in this brief lapse from homework and college applications and life in general, I decided I should provide a little update to y’all and show off my western lingo; whaddaya think, pardner? No, they don’t really talk like that here, but it’s certainly different from back home.
So Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukuh, Happy New Year, and all that jazz. Coming up is a little something I threw together about, well…about being single, I suppose, and realizing that this is temporary and ok and even a good thing sometimes 🙂
Here’s to everyone celebrating this year without a significant other, hope you like:
Looking is instinct; Leaping is inevitable
The closest I ever came to flying
was the moment
at the peak of the swing—
the moment when you’ve pushed a little too far,
gone a little too high so that
the heavy chain goes slack
and all the world is quiet while you fall.
Quiet but for the rush of air
and the hiss of rich adrenaline
lashing out from below your lungs
to tighten about the knobby bones
at the nape of your neck
until
life grabs hold with a snap
like something breaking in two,
and you kick back your legs to pull again toward the sky,
weightlessness all but forgotten.
You were my moment,
or one of them,
like all the others;
but one day someone will exist
who will be more than a moment—
who will be my leap,
my chance to let go of the twisting, pinching metal
and slip away from safety
into the open air,
close my eyes to hear
blood drumming from my stomach
through tensing shoulders
to the clasp of our palms
and back again,
blink,
breathe,
hit the ground hand-in-hand
and running.
(c) 2011 Marie KR
Speak A Better Word 