there is so much wisdom i have to share with you. but for now, i will talk to you about writer's block, because i have it. a more teacherly post will ensue soon, right now i need to be a poet, unapologetically.
---
for the first time in a very long time, i can't write poems. it is a truly disturbing feeling, because poems were my first language; before i spoke an English that other people can understand (if you think that i'm exaggerating, remember that i was a shy kid, until you got to know me). my best friend, katy gallagher, gave me a journal for my 12th birthday and i realized that i could take them out of my head and write them down. they have been in my pockets, in my backpack, ballet bag, my field hockey bag, gym bag, my purse, packed in my suitcase, in my throat and lodged between creases in my brain for two-thirds of my lifetime. i am bilingual, because i am certainly fluent in poetry.
so i am trying to write one, right? i am swollen with joy and full of the emotions that poems make, i have fallen in some love-rain-down-on-me-83-degrees-cumulous-clouds kinda love, i am listening to otis and feeling the pain in his heart in a new hue of blue... but i can't write *the* poem. the definitive 2nd person poem, that there is no other you... i haven't written that poem since i was 17, and it was the best poem i've ever written. (i am probably looking at history with rose lenses, but it was deep, i'm gonna find it and share it in class)
so give me leave during this period of writer's block. i want to learn new languages to build castles upon the ways that i can say these words, i want to have a whole galaxy of adjectives with which to describe the specific fiction i am turning into non-fiction; then i will write your love poem.
