Designated Doodler

Four years of my life are scattered across two thumb drives and a laptop or two. Downloads of papers that other's have written sit stale, saved, long past review. Half my wardrobe is purple, and too casual to ever wear My bike sits in the garage, resting on deflating tires A tired relic of a time when I biked everywhere Sometimes my fingers ache to turn the lock In a series of fluid motion that my heart never forgot My first semester I had no friends, but made a 3.9 Welcome to college, welcome to the dean's list Second semester I joined a Christian sorority I thank God for it, because they were, they are, my family And on a whim cut off most of my hair The hairdresser hesitated to do it, and in the end, he was right I thought moving out that first year and going home Was one of the best days of my life

Tonight I heard a former Muslim man named Saleem talk. Here's what happened: Saleem brought up a young man in college, he pulled out three colored scarves. One white, one red and one black. He draped the white one around his shoulders and pulled the young man in next to him, sharing the scarf. He said, "this is what God wanted when he created man. He was like a daddy that wanted children. He desired fellowship with us and we were blameless. He told Adam and Eve that they could eat from any tree, except for one, the tree of life. And that if they did, surely they would die." "And what did they do? They ate the fruit. And although their physical bodies didn't die in that moment, they suffered a spiritual death," Saleem said, removing his arm (and the scarf) from the young man. "And so the world fell to sin," he said, draping a black scarf over the boy. "But we were still God's children and he did not forsake us. Instead,...

The Same Poem in Many Forms - Form One -  the dirt is done it lays dead cracked and tired beneath the orange red sun that heaves hot breaths onto an earth on fire You drop your broken body onto its breaking knees sinking leather hands onto the gasping ground with flesh burning hot you scrape your fingers across it fingernails filling with brown and the tears your forehead cries shimmer like a spark and fall without a sound the earth drinks the water from your eyes groaning beneath the clear blue skies you are the last in a line of a hundred fathers with a shattering house full of starving daughters and your stick bone horses had no fodder with hollowed brown eyes and bone break bodies they each fell slowly to the ground swallowed by the very land to which your fate is bound (The same poem (or rather, subject of the poem) will be written multiple times in various forms, this is form one)

The sky kisses the roof in a sherbert sunriseBathing the red house on the corner In brilliant yellow light That makes the grass glow neon green Is it the day of the yard sale Friendly unfamiliar faces Buying snippets of your life Little chunks of memories Passed to others for the right price Or is the day I learned to drive As gathering storms swirled In the dark gray skies Rain hurling down On a girl with wide eyes Maybe it's a day from this very month Where we came together in hugs and words And laughed in tandem In a life and room transformed The walls, the house, just a whisper of what had been Close your eyes And pick a memory at random Starring the home on this land Where you once stretched To reach the sink with baby hands Where you felt the burning smack Of spitting water on a sunburnt teenaged back Where you hugged your loved ones Before they left this earth It held your family It took your heart Watched you grow tall Saw you depart We...

What does it mean exactly I don’t want to know I don’t look it up I want to let it go Another medical mess I can’t handle the reality Or process what it means As you say it and look at me With earthy brown eyes That hold a love of oil and earth Your heart murmurs Secret things in Another language Your smile is firmer The determination in it Is your advantage ------- My father is a walking miracle Caring, passionate Hard-working and satirical He has fearlessness That I strive for And I’m the carrot on the stick The motivation, and the kick The one he’s stayed alive for.

On nights like this, I wish I had someone I could run to. Someone I could fall apart to. Someone who would wrap me in his arms and not even try to convince me everything would be okay, because he was smart enough to know that it wouldn’t be. But who would sit there in the silence with me. “Is there a cure?” is one of the first things people ask when you tell them your father has cancer. And I hate the answer. I had a nightmare last night, one part of which involved me knowing that I was only going to live for one more day. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine what it must feel like to not be certain that you’d be around tomorrow? I experienced that feeling in a dream, for a brief amount of time. And it was an awful feeling. Yet, every night when my Dad goes to bed, he’s not sure if he’ll wake up the next day. And as I sit here with burning eyes, the most painful throbbing in my head and that familiar ache in my chest, it breaks my heart to think of how my Dad must feel. Occasionally h...