Okay – so I just lost this entire blog I was writing. I hit something – it highlighted the entire thing except for like two letters and poof! It is gone.

This is the issue of actually writing on this page vs. a word document. I go back and it just goes back to this saved sad two-letter post.

Now I am questioning if what I wrote – just forget it. I can’t recreate it in exact form. Perhaps it wasn’t supposed to be written.

I was writing about two things that keep coming back to me and things I have learned.

In Nell Scovell’s book, Just the Funny Parts she points out that when women kick off pitches they often start with “I don’t quite have it, but I was thinking that it might be funny if maybe he said something like – and these may not be the exact words – but the gist is . . .  By then, who is listening?” she says.

That’s the thing – who is listening?

This immediately brought me to my poetry class – whenever we started to say “This is a draft, I am not exactly sure what I am saying here, but this is what I got . . . ” – my prof would immediately put her head down and start snoring. She would raise her head and go “BORing . . . ”

In the beginning, she followed-up and says, “We all know it is a work in progress. Don’t belittle your work by hammering it down – just read it.” It is like being pushed off a diving board. You dove but you came back up again.

Every single class to me was scary. It was a hard class. I was afraid of the snoring and the “BORing.” Then she would call bullshit on something you wrote if she didn’t it was authentic. She would just say, “bullshit.” She never said it to me, but I think it was close one night. She would help rectify the bullshit – but she would call it. Plain as day – bam.

Sometimes we did these freewrites after 9pm when the room heated and boiled for the last two hours; my face felt flushed, my ears red, carbon dioxide was at a higher level I am sure – and my brain was mush. But, I wrote. Some of it was crap – and some wasn’t, but I still had to read it. Some of it could be salvaged, most of it could, but some could not.

She was really good at finding a line or two in what you wrote and then you jumped off another diving board – and you went with it. There was this one poem she would not let go of with me. It started with a free write and then she took a phrase I wrote and said: “This is what I want you to do with it.” In the end, she thought it may be the best one I wrote and she encouraged me to “Keep going – this is going to be beautiful!” She would say. Really? Is it? Doesn’t matter, jump.

Here it is. I still want to share other peoples work. I am going to email them this week. And I may write my other thought in another post. Will see.

No intro, no doubt, no explanation – just jump. We deserve to stop belittling ourselves as much as we do. We have to stop that shit.

Crunch

I look at my young self; what do I say?
Shut your eyes; don’t cry, and don’t look away.

Each fire burnt to ash you will remember;
each frozen sun will not last forever.

That turbulent blue and deep gray tone sky
did not get the best of you, though she tried.

That Maplewood tree under October siege
held you – those deep grooves, when you couldn’t breathe.

Are you gay? A look of spite, distaste, anger.
A stolen daughter, swiped; a traitor.

I hate the phrase: “twenty-twenty hindsight.”
White is white, and dark is still dark at night.

Mom sent me away. Sent you say? Yes, away.
How? By saying, You are leaving, today.

Ten months shy of eighteen. So close, yet so
far away. If I walk – death toll, my soul.

The cops to carry me off. Is it a
spoof, a lie? I ran away before; failed.

Off to “Annie and the kids” – a storybook;
The Bible, the church steeple, the dog, the brook.

Warm fuzziness, fireplace; the mice, the cackle.
The soon-disappearing dog; the crackle.

The hollow before dusk. The feet, the snort. Crunch.
Cocoa is not coming back. Sorry kids.