#cyanidewrites

By all appearances,

I am poised, present, and pleasant.

My professors call me “prepared”.

My employers call me “professional”.

My editors call me “precise”.

In reality, I am a collection of dysfunctions tenuously held together by nervous tics.

In reality my mannerisms are informed by the careful study of people around me.

In reality, my precision is the result of hours spent searching for the words burning the back of my tongue.

In reality, my “well-organized” papers were planned on the backsides of course syllabi, hours before due-dates.

I am solitude.

And yet I hate neither

For melancholy paints itself in the most exquisite pastels,

And solitude is the space in which my mind truly breathes.

Bumblebees and sunshine

Buzzing through my head,

Singing songs of Summer

Where fairytales are bred.

Dandelion soldiers

March across the lawn;

An army full of wishes

To scatter in the dawn

Sunflowers and sweet peas

Reaching for the sky.

A symphony of cyan,

Where golden finches fly.

When I’m teaching, I love the classroom. 

I love the attention and the validation that I get at the front of the room. I love making relationships with students, seeing them grow and know that I had a hand in their success. 

I love challenging, exploring, singing and dancing and discovering with students. I love story telling. I love laughing. I am so happy and fulfilled when I stand and the front of this room. 

But- 

Put me at the back of this very same room, crushed into a plastic chair and 

I hate the classroom. My soul dies. 

I hate sitting in silence, expected to absorb information with the attention and discipline of a ‘mature adult mind’. I hate that maturity is equated with stillness. I hate that ‘grown-up’ really just means ‘quiet’. 

I hate the shudder that rattles my mind as the movement inherent to my body is restricted to the insides of my bones. 

From this chair I want to rage and scream and rend the sky with passion and ideas. 

But I cannot. 

I must sit and absorb with all the vibrance and diligence of a sponge. 

When I teach, I mourn my lack of creativity. I pour all of my artistry into my work, my lessons, my plans, and I am left with only the drab phonetic remains of a picked-over lexicon. 

Where have my words gone? Where has my poetry gone? What happened to the ache in my hands for the art of creation? 

Fie! Fie! The muses are dead!

Thalia is slain! Erato has fallen! Calliope floats, belly up, in the fifty-gallon fish tank of existential inspiration. My art is exhausted. 

I am exhausted. 

But-

Crush me into this damn plastic chair at the back of this classroom- make me the learner, make me a sponge- and life rushes back to my mind with such force it leaves even Pallas Athene breathless. 

The sun rises on my muses and lo-- They are not dead! Merely asleep!

Fat bastards. 

My ass hits the cold, black plastic and Calliope rights herself. 

The creativity flares. 

The words return in an articulate torrent, jostling to be spilled onto paper as professors throw knowledge at the walls of my mind, hoping something sticks 

whilst I struggle to juggle note-taking and prose-making.

With animated sweep of her arm,

She hits zipper-high

On his thigh.

He crumples,

As mind, body, and soul

Experience factory reset.