She’s kneeling in the brackish odor
Of the garden mums.
Red-orange heads nod sage
Advice of acceptance and weathering.
Her overlarge sunglasses now tilted
Atop her head, lenses reflecting
Curdled gray clouds.
Under her knees, discarded weeds bleed
The same bruised green the sky
Has become.
A shriek and a clatter
Comes from behind where the house looms
Against the darkening day.
A rising wail of newly dead leaves
Sweeps sweated-matted hair
Tugs defeat puddled hands.
She hopes the sirens sound soon.
The waiting is the worst part.
poem
Any Given School Day
Even on a good day, she feels
bereft. Alone. Hunted and haunted.
Her head is a circle of eyes,
each staring in a different direction.
All of them blind.
If there is anything to see, she doesn’t know.
She cannot lift her chin from her chest to find out.
When requested or required to speak in class
there is a rabbit-thump reverb in her voice.
Skyrocketing towards stroke.
If it is noticed, she doesn’t know.
She is too busy berating herself for the fear.
There is too much.
Too much noise, too much silence.
Too much light and absence of same.
It is far too loud, bright, dim, quiet.
Buses and stairs are a problem.
Empty, they are menacing.
Full, they are the same.
Each startled jump
makes her even more self-conscious
and more likely to do it again.
The whole thing is a product
of her own imagining.
She looks at her works,
her grades, her thoughts, her words.
The story they tell seems obvious
to everyone but her.
It will pass.
It will get better.
This will all become common and safe.
It has happened before.
It will happen again.
It will happen again.
The Process 