The World of Make-Believe

Aaron and I used to play school in the winter. My room was the classroom and I was in charge of reading, writing and arithematic; Aaron's room, right next door, was the gym, or the cafeteria, or the music room, whatever we needed at the time. We carried armfuls of stuffed animals between the two rooms, plopped them down and lined them up in rows before singing out a bell and gathering the giraffes and the dogs up again and carrying them back again.

The intellegence says that kids learn to be adults through play. Our make-believe school was practice for the 9 to 5 work world. On the other hand, now that I am grown I play at my job and I wonder, do you do the same? Is it a fantastic grown-up version of make-believe? And is that why I'm still in love with the little nuances of life -- the visits to the grocery store, the paying of bills, the sales meetings -- why? because it is not surrounded by the limits of Simon Says but still full of the possibilities of the world of make-believe.

The Bellybutton

Clean me out every month
because
before I shrivelled up
,introverted
,demured
you forget I was a gateway
to life
supplying nutrients, sustenance
while she read good night, moon, to her belly
while he pressed his head against, pressed his lips to her bellybutton
,to you

before I was cut short I was
maybe even a tunnel for love

Buildings, Blocks

Is a rule of thumb a stereotype? The length of a New York City block depends on which way you are travelling. To go from the southern edge Central Park to the intesection of Broadway and 7th Avenue you travel 14 blocks and, according to conventional wisdom, more than a mile. Turn left and go to Second Avenue, nearly the same geographic distance, but crossing 5 streets, 5 city blocks. And then you will have walked just over a mile and a half among the aggressive side walkers, everyone in black, your life woven around the fenders of brazen cabbies, your pockets stripped clean and your eyes heavy with the city that never sleeps.

Am I making sense? The difference between the vertical journey and the horizontal one, rapid ascendency and slow growth, one life and another.

Grelling's Paradox

Wanted: Autological Adjectives
Description: Adjectives that describe themselves.
Examples: English, 14-charactered, polysyllabic, ambiguous, short

A Warning About Bike Spokes

Do not get caught in the spokes of a bike, do not even dream about it. Don't wear pants when you use your ten-speed because you might image the hem being bitten by the wheel and then you're as good as caught.

But our bikes are all put away now, hanging from L-hooks on the garage wall, the front tire still spinning as voices climb the porch stairs to dinner. There is one that goes back and fro, to and forth, still, between 22nd and 23rd avenues, I see the wheels flash in the outstretched lumens of the street light. They flash twice, wink wink, like they know me. It's always the same two wheels, the same one bike, wink wink.

When I spoke, I said, "Na uh." Na, a song refrain. Uh, the shortest vowel in the English alphabet after i. And me, only five feet tall.

Because when the wheel stops spinning the reflector catches a piece of the red sun coming in through the dim window and the light hits the red car and a scratch in the paint where I got too close to a 2005 Ford Explorer and left matching scars on our bodies. His big one and my little one. Two marks on our bodies, wink wink. And I am only five feet tall.