Each week, we choose pieces that have been submitted to Penumbra that we want to recognize and showcase to the school through Penumbra Weekly. Below are this week's pieces!
May the nectar from the golden pear
Not run off the shelf of your lip
That gracefully offers it a seat
May you taste sweetness without the
Fear that it is fleeting May your face
Be held without any memories to haunt
May your fingers brush for
Longer than the hummingbird’s wings
Can help her escape
May you enjoy the lightness of its flavor
Without becoming addicted
To the sheer almost invisible
sweetness that May brings to remind you of
Your mother’s perfume
My youth? I hear it mostly in the calling birds
echoing through my backyard where
I spent so many days letting salty sweat
seep through brightly colored cotton
Tucked away from roads with thick yellow
lines, so we did what we wanted. The wind
seemed to blow when I needed it most
and my mom would tan on the black chairs
The crack of nearby thunder and the crackling
of a recently-lit fire would light my nerves ablaze
I’d turn an old stick around and around until
white edges turned golden brown under the heat
I’d hoped to grow old there. And I made us promise
we’d never not be just this – alive and young –
but wilderness confuses the mind and exposure
widens the cracks and the wind stopped blowing
When I wanted it to and sticky cotton T-shirts
were social suicide. I’d like to run as far as I can
now, but I know if I do I won’t end up where I
want to be. I can’t run to somewhere I don’t know
Or to where people know me. I want to run to the ocean
or to an open field where the birds of my childhood
have never stopped singing and the breeze of my past
has never stopped blowing and salt is still running
through my veins
I lie awake now, dreaming of a girl with tousled hair
And bright eyes. She holds the world in her eyes.
Her world has a universe in her backyard and she
Revels in the future without knowing her present
Is all I’ve ever wanted back
But this little girl dreams of herself, 5 years older
Because sometimes her backyard universe
Has black holes and her cotton T-shirts
Are beginning to fit her a little too tightly.
This girl dreams of me and me of her.
And now all I can ask
Is if she’d still love me
Each week, we choose pieces that have been submitted to Penumbra that we want to recognize and showcase to the school through Penumbra Weekly. Below are this week's pieces!
The rustling of leaves is a sign that soon the birds will fly south, the
squirrels will stock up on nuts, and the hibernation will begin. The sweet smell of
overripe apples and smoke overwhelms the air. Seemingly the only life around is
the heavy steps of boots hitting frozen packed dirt, trying to escape the snake of
winter under coats of wool and pants of plastic. Fire lights up on the trees and the
dead grass is a golden frame. The cold gusts carry the ever present feeling of
loneliness and the thought that our voices are the only ones still singing. The last
remaining leaves whisper with sadness and fear as the wintry air comes and
goes. The sun feels like the only prevention of freezing but the warmth is brief and
faint. As the darkness sets in and temperatures drop with the sun, the
windows glow like golden invitations. The frost settles on the glass, a warning of
what happens when the door is opened. All is unwell as we prepare for the
loneliest season to descend upon us.
The promise for more time together floats around like the leaves that
escape from the trees. The fire crackles with life and the laughter rings around
the circle and the warmth wraps like a blanket. The world out the window seems
quiet and at peace. But the laughter fades with the light and the silence echoes
around the empty room. Same country, same town, same house, same room, but
scattered and separate. Unable to decipher the running and turning thoughts of
the one beside them. The promise each made to themselves and each other
becoming more distant with each second of mindless and meaningless chatter.
The view out the window seems to die before my eyes and the pop of the
fireplace as the wood dwindles and nobody gets up to bring it back to life. But
when the lights are out and nobody is around and who really cares anyway
because the world is cold and the fire is dead and the water is frozen and the
birds don’t sing and the sky is dark. And it is well known that this is the loneliest
season.
When the sun falls down,
Like a note coming to its end
I remain on the creaky bench
As the orchestrator of all,
Drifting through space and time
When the arguments begin,
When the wars commence,
And when everything starts to unravel,
I still sit on the creaky bench
As the orchestrator of all,
Playing a chorus which warms the heart
All of those who are suffering,
All of those who are in pain,
I play this very music for them
I know that they need to hear it
Maybe one day they will
And when the sun rises up,
Back into the sky,
Like the start of a brand new measure,
At last I leave the creaky bench,
No longer the orchestrator of all,
Leaving these melodies behind
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