Tin Foil Creatures

I started making tin foil animals because I needed something to do with my hands.
I am a fidgeter. I never stop moving. My knees knock together, clapping loudly like they are playing bumper cars, ricochet back like the elastic of a rubber band does when it is pulled, then move towards each other again for another round. Sometimes moving seems as crucial as breathing. My energy builds up inside of me until I can't help but let it out in spastic jolts that end with the inevitable stares from my alienated classmates.
Anyway, the tin foil was on the table, lying there in that way that tin foil does. It seemed uncomfortable and agitated by its inability to be flat. Once I had it in my hands the molding started. It was unpleasant and rough, like the teeth of a fork except not quite as terrifying. The tin foil didn't quite cooperate and instead sprang out suddenly from the way I had wanted it to stay, changing my original vision. Maybe the fact that it fought back was what made me respect it. Or maybe it was the challenge, the wrestling of my thumb to the foil, pressing without denting, taming without scaring.
My hands were mesmerized by their distraction, by the pulling and coiling of the feet and the shaping of the ears.

My tin foil animals include a giraffe llama named Martin, a dimwitted Zebra named Derek, and an elephant with wings who has yet to be named.

"You Can't Let Other People Define You."

I wrote and couldn't stop writing. I scribbled about who I met and described them for hours. It was like reliving the whole thing without reliving it, and getting a chance to finally laugh at what I went through. It was my favorite thing I've ever written, I think. It felt like I was doing the thing I was supposed to be doing. It was so hard and when I finally found the right words, it felt like I was breathing after not breathing for so long, like I was taking the air inside of the deepest parts of me and finally feeling it rush through my body. Yeah, it was like I was breathing again. Writing helped me find a home in the life I had returned to, in the strangeness of how it felt to be back again. I showed it to mom and with every laugh that escaped her mouth, I wanted to write more and more. But I was writing it for me and it felt more right than writing's ever felt. Or maybe it didn't and I'm just making it something it never was. Its so easy to do that with memory.

I miss you more than ever right now even though you're still around. It sort of feels like you're already gone, or that you belong to someone else now. But its good. Its okay. I'm going to be okay.

My life is too much to talk about, too much to try and throw a net on and contain in any kind of words right now. Its terrifying. When someone asks me a question about my "future plans", a part of me turns and walks away and the rest is left staring into their eyes, wondering what the answer is. My voice always shakes when I deliver my answer.
Dad says, "You can't let other people define you."

Late Night Thoughts...

My shower is still drip dropping water from this morning and I can't twist the metal knobs tight enough to make it stop. The drops are few and far between but they make me feel less alone, less like a stranger to this always unfamiliar place that I have been calling home.

I love the emptiness of this space almost as much as I love filling it. Sometimes I feel like the possibility of words is enough to keep me going. The never ending challenge that my writing offers me is what makes me know myself.

I miss being with the people in my life that really, really know me. I miss it so much that it hurts.

Just the beginning...

There was a perspective student sitting in on our class that day. Her cheekbones were higher and more pronounced than any cheekbones I'd ever seen. They looked as if they had had some sort of head on collision with the non-pointy end of a pencil and were now permanently dented. Even when she wasn't smiling they seemed to dip in like a hole dug with a shovel, or a crater made by a crashed UFO. She had thick hair, which was twisted into a million tiny curls. Each strand was tucked under a bandanna that was decorated with flowers.
The room seemed much bigger when half of the class was missing. I felt like if I yelled, my voice would echo in the emptiness of it all, that my words would bounce off of the black tables that filled up the space. It was like a tiny, unattractive grand canyon, I thought to myself, peering through the blinds that covered the back wall. Through them I saw the sun that I thought had disappeared and a few actors sitting around the white plastic tables that were covered in smudges of dirt. One of the actors had long hair that he had pulled into a messy ponytail.
I sat back in my chair and eyed my teacher, who spoke with a heavy accent that I had fallen in love with from the moment I had met him. He was a German, Polish, Jew who wore collared shirts and called me Sabella.
"This kind of class where nobody shows up, is something I have never had before," Hennryk told us, clearly annoyed.

My Graduation Speech

“Ew! What’s he doing here?!” Anina yelled. It was the first day of kindergarten and my hair was very, very short. I remember looking around in a confused way and thinking, “what boy?”
And then it hit me. I was the boy.
I would have given up on Springside and the seemingly impossible dream of ever fitting in right then and there. I would have gladly thrown in the towel and abandoned the idea of education altogether. In fact I was ready to do just that. I decided to try and convince my mom that Springside was a dangerous environment, in hopes that she would agree and take me home. But what I failed to understand was that my mom was a teacher at Springside and that this was a completely lost cause. Still, I was determined.
“But, I’m sick! Don’t leave me here. This rug is making me sneeze. We have to leave right now,” I said, trying every excuse I could think of. Unfortunately, she wasn’t taking the bait. Finally I decided to try the absolute extreme. Tears. This ended with my mom leaving and my teacher, Ginia, comforting me. I think she won me over with food in the end. Eventually other people knew me too. The fact that I resembled a young boy for a while was just another part of who I was. And while I did manage to scare a few of the visiting parents who were taking tours of the lower school, I seemed to find my place in the class.
Even as kindergarteners, we began to create a bond that would link us together like puzzle pieces. It was through the creation of this bond and the struggle that we went through to keep it together, that we have discovered how important it is to trust one another with the parts of ourselves that make us most insecure, because these differences are what matter. I learned to stick it out, ugly haircut and all, and found that my classmates accepted me for it.
The transition from lower to middle school was a bumpy one. We were entering a world of plaid skorts that ended awkwardly at our knees and collared shirts that could ONLY be from Lands’ end. I think in middle school, we each had our very own speed bumps to deal with. Our paths were rocky for so many different reasons. Personally, foreign language was my greatest challenge. Anybody who knows me is aware of the fact that there were times when I had trouble forming coherent sentences in English. The idea of having to learn another language while still trying to grasp my first was a scary thought. Socially, we seemed to be inside of this middle school bubble, where the drama was both deadly serious and hysterically funny. It was pretty daunting.
I spent a majority of those four years struggling with my work and the unconventional ways that I learned. I realized over and over again, that the way that I understood things was different from the way most of my classmates did. I didn’t have the ability to memorize facts, for instance. And the idea of doing math in my head was a dream that was simply out of reach. I needed to figure out how to learn in a different way, but there wasn’t time for that.
I think I must’ve forgotten that I wasn’t the only person who was struggling. In fact, every one of us was. That’s why it was so hard – we were all struggling at the same time, becoming frustrated and mean to one another when we should have been leaning on one another.

And then we were freshman.
Upper school has been one of the hardest, most rewarding experiences I will probably ever have. I have discovered who I am in so many ways and I believe that this is the best kind of education a person can hope for. I think our teachers have taught us to push ourselves to see things beyond our initial first reactions. We have discovered that in order for us to find the deeper meaning in things, we must challenge our own ideas. I am so grateful to our teachers for pushing us to do that. They have made it their life’s work to tug on the threads of who we are, and have encouraged us to explore ourselves. I’m not sure that there is anything we could do or say to properly thank them for this gift they have given us…well I mean, besides candy.
And finally here we are. Graduating from our Springside, from our home, from each other. We grew closest this year. We seemed to come together as a class and as friends. We still had our fair share of problems, like our inability to make group decisions and listen during homeroom. But when it came right down to it, we were strong enough to lean on each other when things were really hard. And now I am faced with one of the greatest challenges of all, leaving each one of you behind. This is nothing short of terrifying, which is ironic because I spent so much time wondering if I would ever make it, if I would ever get the chance to stand here with all of you and graduate from Springside.
The idea of saying goodbye is something I have been dreading all year. But I know one thing for sure. Like my experience here at Springside, every fear that each one of us conquers will make us stronger and will help us to shape the person we are becoming. I am so incredibly proud of each and every one of you girls and I’m proud to be a part of this class. I can’t imagine not coming back next year, not seeing your faces or laughing with you. But I can’t wait to see what you accomplish. Congratulations and thank you so much for being my family for all these years and for accepting me in spite of my hair cut.

Know

You know all my parts, each puzzle piece of me

those too tiny to locate without a magnifying glass,
those hidden in the darkness, shaking violently in fear
that won't be drawn from their corners without a
flashlight
or a candle,
to light the paths they must take
to return


to return To my soul, which cries out,
terrified and frantic
lost without all of itself
as if it is a child who can't find her mother in the market
and is yelling, "MOM?" through every single aisle
Searching for the right dark hair,
or the red striped shirt
that she was wearing just a minute ago
that she was wearing when their hands were last clasped in a promise
in a pledge
to not let go,
to not let go

Pencil Shavings

My electric pencil sharpener is full of shavings, full of piles of weightless wood. My desk is crowded, shoved. The funny thing is, this desk has nothing to do with me. It feels so far away, so bruised, so last minute. They found it and put it anywhere they had room. My room. Extra room. I've always resented that. The pictures are knocked over because I stopped wanting to prop them up. It became exhausting to see the smiling faces. It became a lie to watch them smile. And none of this feels like it belongs to me. I feel as if this room is out of my control, as if it is being judged every time I step inside of it and each time I leave. It feels crammed and tired. The lamps keep gathering because there isn't anyone who can fix what has been done. There is a shortage of outlets, and everything feels too open like the curtains that are too thin to cover up the window. A part of me hides away when I'm in this room, and its only because I feel as if suddenly something in their eyes is too threatening. Something in their accusations hits too close to where she never ventures. And that is the way that I work, but you refuse to accept it. It is the way that I am when I'm like this, the very person I become when it slips down my throat. You have resented me forever. Don't try to deny it. Don't try and judge me through the judgments that you have already made. I'm yours, how could you? I'm a part of who you are. This is my separation, the part that aches on the inside of exactly what I am. This is the torn up part of who I am, that I will never understand. These are the problems that you never see.

"One of the things that I love most about my life is who you are." After that I cried a little bit. I let myself see how much you mean to me. This is us. This is you and I and everything we are and then some.
Our laughter dissolves us and makes us see the things we are most afraid of. It loosens us up until we have nothing to fear except for the putting off of what we already know. Our laughter heals; it wrestles with my tired insides until all I can do is surrender.
My role is to protect you. I’m stuck within the unspoken promise that I’ve made to only myself. Its tense and heavy, terrifying and pointless. The territory is beyond my own boundaries, its beyond common sense and choice. Its prickly and offers no reward, but i can’t bare to watch you without these eyes.
But I trust nobody else's laughter the way that I trust yours. I trust the way it vibrates through you and sticks to your tangled body no matter how much you're shaking. And if this isn't love I don't know what it is.


I carry your heart with me

I carry your heart with me
(I carry it in my heart)
I am never without it
(anywhere I go you go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling)
I fear no fate
(for you are my fate, my sweet)
I want no world
(for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

I carry your heart
(I carry it in my heart)
-e.e. cummings