Write Around the World

Someone asked the other day why I became a writer, and I had some trouble at first pinpointing the reasons. I think I write because I was a dramatic child. The oldest, the one with whom my mother liked to say, they “made the most mistakes.” Like in kindergarten, when they let me watch that Michael Caine movie The Killer Bees, and I arrived twenty minutes late to school the next day because I had to tiptoe past every dandelion. Or how in first grade, when I split open my pants climbing a rope in gym class, I got sent back to class with un**es hanging out, since no one was home to bring me new clothes.

April Poetry Shower – Day 28 Why I Write

The end of the school year is often an exercise in tatters and fumes. So it’s a good time to acquaint ourselves with one antidote to that: be less. Show up in yesterday’s hairdo. Repurpose your fifth favorite pair of pants. There is beauty in asymmetry and peace in knowing that however you move through this day, whether shiny or ragged, rough or sublime, it is enough. You are always enough.

April Poetry Shower – Day 27 You Don’t Have to Be Everything

There’s a certain poetry to the friendships of our youth. Maggie was the friend who held the door closed on my janky stick-shift car when the door froze open, and she was the friend who helped me rig up a hair dryer and an extension cord when that same door froze shut.

We quoted lines from Say Anything like it was the Bible, crooned lovesick ballads in the school talent show, and once won a “Mony Mony” lip-sync contest in a church basement.

We shared Homecoming dresses and cherry lip smackers and all our secrets. And she was my ride-or-die before I’d ever even heard that phrase, back when happiness meant Madonna on the radio, five bucks in my pocket, and my bestie by my side.

April Poetry Shower – Day 25 Love poem for Say Anything, Billy Idol, and Taco Bell