fly up day

its so much easier to write about things you dont feel close to. like i could make fifty poems in ten minutes while riding the 9, while filing through craigslist, while reading and the page jumbles and the words jumble and youve created a story in your brain, beginning, middle and always, the end. the end usually comes first. why do we write the end before the middle, after the beginning, why can we never let anything unfold, why must we always assume that we know, ultimately how the story will close, skipping the meat, the sandwich of the story. its easier, to close your eyes and point, to spin the globe on your bookshelf and point, to a continent, a far off island in the middle of a body of water than make actual plans. why is that? why are we incapable of letting that middle of the story fill in, become ripe and full and grow, with age, allow the ending to end, when, if, it does. we are impatient and untrusting of ourselves, of other people. people have made it difficult to trust and so we save ourselves by saving our stories. by writing ourselves out of situations we cant see clearly through, so that those last pages arent left up to fate, they are in our careful, sorrowful and limited hands. because fate fucks up and endings arent always happy, unless you write them yourself.
i cant write about any of this. i cant put it down and i cant say it out loud so its just swimming around in my head, fish bobbles and clear jellyfish murking up the tides that used to come easily, in and out. i cant breathe under all of this and im stuffy static walking through the days. im trying, im trying, but i dont know how to write this one down. i dont know how to make all these feelings come out on the page and resolve themselves, because they are too big, they are too heavy and im so used to carrying such weight. im in it right now.
my preschoolers graduate tonight and their families watch, their large and diverse families, each with two cameras in each hand, their little babies flying up to first grade and in one photo im sure, at least, tears were caught in kids hair as i hugged them, as they grabbed onto my legs and smiled up at me. i couldnt help it. i wanted to feel what that felt like but i was too far away from it. like, i wanted to be them, to be that young, i wanted that day again, to remember what it was like to be so small and hopeful, to have it all streching out in front of you instead of bleak, dry, desert. and i wanted to be the parents, because as much as i love these children (and i LOVE them) they are not mine and with their parents there they arent looking for me in the crowd to give that approving nod and one finger wave, so i just fade back into the cubbies and clutter and cupcakes lining the walls.