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teaching writing
every day i stand outside a different door and breathe. today, maybe i will make no mistakes. likely not. likely today i will misplace the file, forget her name, miss that planning meeting. today i will stare across the table after you’ve spoken your deepest hurt and all i will be able to say is thank you. thank you for opening up your mistakes so that we can see the possibility in them. thank you for damning the violence done to you without damning yourself. thank you for tossing that memory into the circle so we all taste your mother’s tamales, or cup of noodles with hot sauce, or burnt pancakes. i cry a lot. more and more as i get older i can’t contain the truth, it pours out of me saline on the page. i hold their notebooks away from my body. there are dangerous phrases in here, they could overthrow something. i sneak them out in my arms. later i put on an apron and an old shirt. working in the dirty sink i break the words so the pain comes out.
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advent
i am in love with the empty church an hour before the service while the chairs are still stacked and the coffee just begins to bubble. the altar is covered in a blue cloth, the spotlight is off. jesus has breath held, hoping the guests arrive. we row the chairs, stack the hymnals. they begin to enter, pressed pants and sparkly shoes. good morning. a small hand in a larger, rougher one. a cane scrapes the floor. a gorgeous hat, a wide smile. these weeks before christmas we say we are waiting for the light to be born into the world, for the first cry, the infant sigh. but mornings like this I think the light is already here. we are waiting til we’re ready to open our eyes. |
Authordani gabriel Archives
December 2018
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