"Life itself is a haphazard, untidy, messy affair" (Dorthy Day), so it's only fair that my writing should follow suit.

Week Three.

 Challenge writing tasks.

(Who knew that before the jungle of the classroom, there would be the jungle of me?)
Drafts pictured above. Slightly less drafty drafts typed below.

It wasn't planned, but that's okay.
π“…¬
She listened. That changed absolutely everything.
π“…¬
When he told me, I understood.
π“…¬
I made something with that experience.
π“…¬
He left me. I met me.
π“…¬
Yes, I still miss what was.
π“…¬
"Here I am!" I thought. "Finally."
π“…¬
Even my dad cried that day.
π“…¬
"It'll be okay." And it was.
π“…¬
I am where I should be.
π“…¬
And then I understood their love.
π“…¬



Modeled on Wallace Stevens's "ThirteenWays of Looking at a Blackbird,"
my own "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Person."

I.
Among the multitude of faces.
the only thing I see
is their gaze.

II.
I was of a mind,
as so many are,
to look somewhere, someone, easier.

III.
They are moving,
a still in the motion picture of life.

IV.
A man and a woman
are one.
One is
neither a man nor a woman.

V.
I do not know
if I should listen
or is it better
to speak?
Do I wait?

VI.
A person's shadow
falls on
the shadow of who
they were or could have been.

VII.
I imagine their past,
their fantastical stories,
scattered now around the feet
like so many common birds
searching for crumbs of who they were.

VIII.
I know what is
beautiful and wonderful and valuable.
I know, too, that
these people are.

IX.
They trek out of sight,
marking the edge
of my limited perspective.

X.
At the sight of these individuals
huddled together or distinct,
we should cry out in joy.
Welcome home.
Instead, our silence weeps.

XI.
We look and think we recognize.
Fear pierced us when
we mistook
the anonymous for someone who
actually mattered.

XII.
We look away.

XIII.
In their movement,
in our furtive glances,
we glimpse.
You look at a person
and wish you had not.

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