palabras y pensamientos

my college professor told us once, mid-lecture,

that every time she looks at her hands,

she sees those of her mother.

i find myself turning into my mother now, too.

and this week, i just feel full of love for her:

for her laugh and her smile and our girl time,

for the recipes she emails me, all typed in lowercase,

signed off with the same:

"yum

love you,

mom"

i am going to miss her when i move away.

quarantine has gifted us a year of living

under the same roof, yet on different floors.

the only direction i need to spend time with my mom is:

go downstairs to say hello at 5pm

when she takes her daily break for a daily walk.

rejoice in her joy when she invites you along.

maybe in miami we will take daily walks

separately,

together.

the street from half underground

cars rolling by;

the quad with students running

across it;

the lush green forest trees behind

the bean-shaped campus;

many, many shaftways;

a balcony to myself, looking out over

calle juan de dios;

the kitchen window, with its perfect

cut-out of the madrid sky;

a gas station and the school garden

from my first classroom;

paneled floor-to-ceiling windows with

juliette balconies;

the bay window from chez gerry

peak brownstone sublet;

and soon to be a highway-view

from floor #32.

What happens when you are not a poet,

nor have you written for years and years,

but you have been writing poems for 27 days

and on the third-to-last day

you almost forget

to put pen to paper

(well, you know, the computer equivalent of that:

text on a blank page)?

Why do some habits stick and others don't?

What made this challenge work for me?

Was this month not busy enough?

Did I learn anything from it?

Did I improve as a writer?

I don't really know, what do you think?

Do the poems need to be fleshed out and revised?

Is it okay that these have all been one-and-done,

shitty-first-drafts kind of poems?

Does it matter if you think it's not okay?

Who am I writing for, after all?

Is it not just— me?

n. a friendship that can lie dormant for years only to pick right back up instantly, as if no time had passed since you last saw each other.

I have never been too good

at keeping in touch.

Picking up the phone

crossing sound waves

remembering to ask

"how are you doing?"

I think I have gotten better

throughout the years.

Realized that the simple act

of sending a short

"thinking of you" text

is better than its absence.

I know now that best friends

are rare as they come.

These lilo friendships,

unaffected by a years-long pause,

picking right up from

where you last left off.

I took a big juicy bite, peach juice rolling down my chin I looked to you as it fell, but then you walked away I wiped my chin with my hand, sticky sweet stuck to the sand I wondered where you would go, oh when you walked away

Your hair was glowin', sun beams, boat's a rowin', Hot day, and I'm floatin' Where you think you're going, baby?

Hey, summer love now, feeling lazy We're on the beach yeah, we're going crazy It's hard to not like, the beach baby We're on the beach year, we're going crazy

Today marks

my first herb plant purchase

of the spring season.

Basil, fresh aroma

wafting up as I walk her home.

Hands in soil,

packing the bottom third

of a clay pot.

Carefully take basil

out of her plastic cup

and surround her

with more earth.

Pat it all down.

Water her.

Sun peeks out through

the clouds—ready.

High in dense thought forests

in the misty, foggy mountains of your brain

lives one of the world's rarest mammals:

the giant overthinker, also called the overthinker.

Overthinkers eat almost nothing

but worrisome and ridiculous thoughts.

Occasionally they eat other vegetation,

fish, or small animals, but these thoughts account

for 99 percent of their diets.

Overthinkers eat fast,

they eat a lot,

and they spend about 12 hours a day doing it.

The reason: They digest only about a fifth of what they eat.

Overall, thoughts are not very nutritious.

To stay healthy, they have to eat a lot—

up to 15 percent of their body weight in 12 hours—

so they eat fast.

Overthinkers can freak out as many as

13,000 times a day, and are also very good at panic attacks.

Sometimes male overthinkers (try to) relax

by doing handstands against trees.

Overthinkers are shy; they don't venture

into reality where most people live.

This restricts overthinkers to very limited areas.

i never did know how to grind, felt

uncomfortable leaning my backside

against a boy my age, afraid

of what i'd feel there.

how does a girl who has no rhythm

dance in rhythm against another?

i was so focused on my inability to shake my hips,

i didn't realize they weren't thinking about my moves.

no, a middle school boy is not thinking

about your dance moves really at all.

When I was a child, playing soccer matches on weekends, we took turns preparing snack for the team, and always—always—someone brought orange slices. Pre-cut, ready to eat, grab and peel back the skin as you sink your teeth into the pulpy flesh.

My students this week were split 50/50 on whether they preferred orange juice with pulp or without. Most agreed, though, that when fresh-squeezed, pulp was fine, even preferred.

In Spain, they eat everything with a fork and knife, fruit included. I was always amazed by how they could de-bone a fish and get all the meat out, its delicate spine lying clean on the side of their plate. So too with an orange: cut off the top and the bottom, make slices along the rind, peel it off, and use your fork and knife to cut the now naked orange into bite-sized pieces.

I eat oranges now for dessert like I did back in Barcelona after dinner. I slice it like my mom did for our soccer team, wipe the sticky juice off my cheeks with my sleeve. Then lean back, flushed and refreshed, the peels wobbling and knocking together like empty boats on the plate.

Repetition feels

like tripping on all my words.

Waiting for a reply to your email, exasperated.

You re-read it. Could you have worded it differently?

Leaving dishes in the sink overnight

Forgetting to turn off the lights

Not hanging the bath mat over the side of the tub

A half-open tap going glub glub glub

When the stove is covered in splatters of oil

Or water takes a million years to boil

The sound of your neighbor's cackling laughter

Or a creepy crawly mouse up in the rafters

Crumbs from the floor attaching to bare feet

Freezer door left open, defrosting the meat

The smell of trash that needs to go out

that's what this year has been, hasn't it?

a controlled abandon of what we thought we could control.

oh! how misguided we were, for truly,

what can we really control in this life?

the pandemic took my life and shook it like a snow globe.

STOP!

—it urged me—

TAKE A MOMENT AND JUST LOOK.

watch the slow flakes float to the white-painted ground.

what kind of life do you want for yourself?

is this the life you envisioned?

and if not:

how can you abandon what was and manifest what will be?

i am abandoning this life

in favor of one where i can see the sun and the sea

There's something strange

in the speedy stillness of

sitting in a silver shuttle

slicing through the sky,

I almost feel quite wired.

Awake 20 hours,

feel like a cold shower

could give me some power.

Soon I'll live in the sun

get to go on some runs

show off deez buns (ha).

I'd like us to be

living near the sea

I can see my father

sitting in the living room

on our old, white canvas futon,

guitar propped on his knee,

improvising some song

to narrate our actions in the kitchen.

Amy, she's making herself

a PB & J.

I'd look at him and roll my eyes,

embarrassed.

I find myself nowadays

not just singing to narrate

but to push through

uncomfortable moments.

My students are surely now

I found it too girly

Too long

A stark contrast to my short first name

But then this fall

I had to dig into the story of my name

And I searched for the meaning of each part:

Mar-is-sa

While it could be interpreted as “little Mary”

More likely it means “of the sea”

Del mar

De la mar

(In Spanish you can actually say both

Which I think is quite beautiful)

And I realized that

I may just like it:

Being of the sea