I thought to abandon you, the memory of you.  To go about a ceremonial purge to free myself of you.  I talk to you as if you are here and plead of you to leave, for you were only for a season, the lifetime of a leaf. 

I cannot live in the fantasies of maybe’s, what if’s, and what could have been’s.  For I was asleep when you were awake; now I am awake, and you are asleep. Maybe.

I try to shut off any form of communication that can get inside.  Yet you speak to me in songs, scenes, lines, photographs.  Maybe we share a similar muse.  I don’t know.  Then I think, even if you write a line from time to time that reminds you of me, I’m only a rented muse.

I hate poetry.  I hate a whole genre of literature because of you.  And the genre hems me in to its purpose to talk about it.  To teach about it.  For every poem reminds me of you.  To introduce it to someone is like a greeting.  Hello, again.  A sadness comes over me because the sting is felt each time.  To approach you again, to think of you.  Even if the poem is about something other than love, somehow, I find a way to relate it back to you—a phrase, a line, a word— a maze I follow to find you.  If the poetry is handwritten, my eyes follow the curves of each letter to find your signature somehow—like how your “h’s” have a v-shaped roof next to its chimney.  It’s your mark on the world where other eyes pull to its shapes. 

I’m not obsessed.  I say this then think of storytellers who try to convince their audience that they haven’t lost their mind; and as the audience, for them to make such a statement, we are sure to think they have.  Well, maybe I have. But at least if we all must lose our mind at some point on this earth, for me, you will be the best reason for doing so.  Losing my mind over you. Love.  The reality of things.  And even when I am 80 or 90 years old— closer to the end than ever—if my mind fails me, I think you’re the only memory that I will keep.  I’ll speak your name in my sleep; I’ll speak to you in my dreams; I’ll speak about you to every stranger that’s passing through; and in my dying breathes, you will be my last exhale. 

Photograph by Marta Syrko

She was drawn to this place where they once shared space and time long ago.  It was dangerous to reenter as she knew it would open a part of her heart she had covered with the added years since the last time she saw him.  For to open her heart again with him would create a vacuum that sucks breath and life into a void of space where the spiritual transcends all things physical.  She knew it would be easy to open but harder to close—maybe even impossible to close— and that she would do it alone.  That there was no prescription for the gnawing hunger that would be there.  Nothing could nor would feed its appetite, for even if she could have him, she knew a place inside of her would be eternally insatiable; having him would mean wanting more of him. 

The pull ran deeper than anything she’d ever known.  It scared her then; it scared her now. 

Words streamed in her heart, an inner knowing she couldn’t escape: Love is as strong as death, unyielding as the grave. It feeds and takes and takes some more.  Even if one were to drown its flames of passion, it would be futile.  She had heard these words before; now she felt them in her bones and knew they were true.  

She entered.  As she glided among the marked gravestones, the grass folded like waves of hair and padded like a cushion under her feet.  And the trees.  They held a mystery all their own— long years of being and holding the secret conversations and moments of those who have crossed their path.  She stopped to listen. 

Oak trees draped in Spanish moss whispered their memory: While she took in that beautiful scenery, he always kept a few steps between them so he could watch her.  Although she never led on, she could feel when his eyes were on her; and to keep in time with his gaze, she spoke back to him with her petite hourglass frame, intentionally poised in each movement and step.  Then she turned toward his gaze to catch him looking at her.  He didn’t mind being caught.  There he stood with poised frame, fingertips tucked in his front jean pockets, the weight of his body mostly shifted to one leg, and his unshakable stare like she was a wonder he couldn’t fully comprehend. 

The memory enveloped her.  She welcomed with fear the flow of love and adoration she once felt for him.  It became clear to her now after all these years why she ran from something so beautiful and sacred.  It was his tunnel vision of her that scared her.  How could someone feel so much—so much for her?  And her worst fear then: How long would it last?  It would only be a matter of time before he would step out of the trance and realize she was just a girl, a girl with flaws—nothing special.

That’s all it took: One memory resurrected another, their shapes flip-booked in mind’s pages. 

She closely examined the contents—a life in review— with a feverish excitement and with worry.  What if I can’t remember?  What if I can’t remember everything?  She noticed things she didn’t see the first time around.  Where she once focused on certain parts she thought would be most important, she was surprised to find something new and fresh in another frame’s corner. 

Our memories.  They are all here.    

She thought she’d forgotten.  She had taken in more of him—the two of them—than she realized, a discovery with clearer vision.  One can appreciate the cursed gift of memories mapped side by side as a whole picture rather than how they unfolded, each destined moment reached one at a time. 

Each memory swaddled her into a cocoon of rest and warmed her like the first of morning’s sun, and yet unexpectedly, her relief was quickly followed by a terrifying realization she couldn’t deny: Her heart had deceived her for almost a decade.  Unconsciously or secretly like a separate entity unto herself, her heart had rehearsed their memories over the passing years, and ever since, she had been searching for him in everybody she’d ever met.

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I have been working on and off on this piece for months.  It is a difficult piece with its verb shifts and moods as the character struggles between her past and present.  It is still in draft stage and unfinished.  As a writer, I have come to realize that nothing written is truly in its final stage; it’s rather abandoned.  For now, I put this piece aside.  I hope you enjoy and can relate to that one person you’ve met that has changed your life forever—that one person who has changed how you view love and how you view yourself when in the midst of it.  And when those realizations and revelations come, I pray you have the courage to embrace what once was so that you are readily able to recognize and accept it the next time it comes—loving better and stronger with all intensity.      

It has definitely been a different year teaching during a “pandemic.”  Our students were so glad to be back in the classroom this fall.  Discipline problems were at an all-time low.  However, students’ personal challenges seemed to surface more this year. 

Although I cannot share specifics on what surfaces in my classroom among my students, I’m a teacher who has a front row seat to their mental health issues.  I am extremely sensitive to these issues because I am a daughter of a mother who has a mental illness.  As a young child, I quickly learned of the stigma that came with her illness.  After some discussions and occurrences with my students this year, the stigma sadly still remains just as strongly as it did during my adolescent years. 

The stigma of mental health issues is harmful because it silences us.  Someone who struggles with mental issues rarely speaks out about them for fear of being ostracized, treated differently, or such information being used against them.  This sharing of information places one under a microscope where certain behaviors done by them might be seen as odd or “crazy,” yet for anyone else doing the very same thing would be seen as quite normal. 

Many families (including mine) that have been affected by mental illness in one way or another have learned through their familial generations that it’s the “family secret” everyone knows yet no one talks about it. We set ourselves apart from that “one” in the family, creating an “us” and “them” mentality when we all battle mental issues.    

An illness of the mind also can be keeping a record of wrongs, overthinking, forming habits, gossiping, gaslighting, inciting factions, needing control, etc. Because of our sin nature, we are all susceptible to these mental traps.  As unhealthy mental patterns are nurtured rather than squashed, they can grow to be quite powerful, holding dominion and mastery over us.  The effects of such mental entrapments are no less destructive to the quality of our life than individuals who have a “medical diagnosis”. 

Like mental illness, addictions can be viewed quite the same.  Although it is easier to explain away the ill behaviors of some because they are addicted to drugs or alcohol, if not for the grace of God, you or I too could be the drunkard or drug addict.  Substance abuse is a temporary escape from one’s mind where the underlying issues may be the mental entanglements of unforgettable shame, regret, and unhealed wounds.  Anyone of us can be caught in a net of condemnation where we replay what feels like an unrecoverable mistake on our part and, with that, “what might actual be” if only the mistake had never happened in the first place.       

Mental health, simply put, is measured by our cope-ability to life’s circumstances.  Because life comes with many tribulations, we constantly are working toward or maintaining balance.  At different junctures in our life, we are either surviving or thriving. Though not so much with ourselves, we undervalue the God-given trait of resilience in others.  We are more prone to judgmental attitudes about one’s former struggle than readily celebrating the victory of one who recovered and overcame.  This is where we fail one another, causing a breakdown in humanity.  

Admittedly, I initially came back to the classroom this fall mostly concerned about student learning gaps.  Certain events realigned my thinking and redirected me back to my purpose— to be present with my students, in tune to the deeper needs in their life, especially at a time in our world where “normal” vaporized as an illusion. 

Even though the 2020-2021 school year was unpredictable from day to day, I am thankful for the classroom setting.  It kept us connected at a time when distance was encouraged.  In our vulnerable state, the classroom served as a place to have honest conversations; our talks diminished some of the social barriers we’ve all hidden behind.  My students realized that as those barriers were broken down, the loneliness and isolation that comes with mental health became manageable and came with benefits: their grades improved; compassion and care for others increased; and the teacher-student relationship was less of a divide, for they witnessed that we are all the same— in need of each other.  With this group, we became friends, and instead of viewing each other as individuals, we became unified. 

Photo by Shane Rounce on Unsplash

I once fell in love with a man who was a poet.  His words along with his gaze upon me made me feel so alive.  His words stoked a fire in my heart.  Sometimes I didn’t reciprocate right away.  I wanted to sit in it— bathe in it— for I’d never known anything like it. 

I wondered if I was enough.  I wasn’t a poet like him.  Where I had limitations to express myself, he seemed to have none.  I convinced myself he knew how to love and to feel, and I didn’t.  I tried so hard to write in verse to show my love, but my words failed to convey what my heart felt.  All I could do was try my best and hope that he knew. 

Now I know words fall short, and where words fail, the “knowing” trumps.  Can the grave and its appetite for the dead ever cease?  Can fire be divided into individual flames?  Nor can love be contained and pinned to mere syllables. 

For I see poets in this world who try to bleed out their heart onto pages, unable to exorcise the ghosts of past loves.  They twist, push-pull, and wrangle to squeeze words out, only to extract a drop of what they feel.  It’s like the iceberg effect— 10 percent is revealed where 90 percent remains hidden; the tip-top is only our reaction to the events of love, where underneath is the complex design of anticipation and transformation, which cannot be fully explained.      

If love were chalked down to the mere wealth of words, it sadly would be minimalized and should be utterly scorned. 

I love you needs to be expressed in word, whether poetically written or not; it doesn’t matter.  Say it a lot, but show it more.  Where words fail to be remembered—even the most beautifully penned ones— I can still remember how he made me feel and how I felt about him; that is unshakable and unforgettable.