Kathrine Schwartz
I am this too shall pass
and drink some water and go for a walk.
Rosacea red cheeks,
one must have a mind for winter.
Tracing the grooves of my teeth
out of habit.
The chipped pale pink nail polish and rusted rings of fingers
locked, and from you no secrets are hid.
I have a list of words I like: nefarious, confection, adulation,
words I want to use more: caper, operatic, flounce.
Sometimes lost in thought I wonder
if my lips were moving that whole time.
My roots planted in the first day of May,
born on a Monday.
A mi me encanta hablar en otra lengua porque
you have to work for your words.
I think about a line from that new ABBA song,
I’m not the one you knew before. I’m now and then combined
I’ve loved every English professor I’ve ever had. Particularly the older males. Is that sexist?
Water, texting my mom, mint gum, and poetry class have helped me through my fog today,
and Sondheim singing
to make you aware of being alive
Sometimes I can hear music playing from my shower window. It’s very cinematic.
The time Mrs. Unger made me a peanut butter and marshmallow sauce sandwich at her home in
Middleburg on white wonder bread
I’d never known something so soft, our bread was always wheat and grainy.
I was a donkey in my second grade Christmas pageant. It was an indispensable role.
I processed down the aisle with Mary and Joseph, A-list eighth graders. My sister was Angel
Gabriel. At the Reid’s Christmas party Mrs. Reid joked to my mother that she had an ass and an
angel and I only now get the joke.
I have to live in order to write but I have to write in order to live.
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
and what I assume you shall assume,
for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
A Note From the Author...
Inspired by Whitman's "Song of Myself," I started a writing practice where I excavate my mind for random memories, habits, lines that have stuck with me, etc to produce a self compilation. I wrote this piece in the notes of my phone.
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