jenny-cassellWhisper

American
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a lovely, unappealing workI sat down today and began to type, / But nothing I said seemed to come out right. / The meter was all wrong,
30
Jan 12, 2010
antonyms and synonymsYou are the practicality that keeps me grounded; / I am the spontaneity that drags you along. / You are the reason to my irrationality;
17
Apr 3, 2011
beautiful paintingraindrops on the windshield / glistening like stars / the darkness surrounds me
18
Jan 13, 2010
be still my soulBe still my soul. / Be silent and calm, / For none can know of your brooding.
18
Oct 4, 2009
chasmThere's a chasm within my soul, / and it's the place that you ought to know well. / There's a canyon within my heart,
4
Jan 12, 2010
defining mePeople ask me all the time what my major is, what I’m going to do with my degree, as if that somehow defines me, somehow is a mold into which I should fit. As if being a teacher, a doctor, a lawyer, a mechanic, or a nurse makes me real; as if calling myself a statistician, a technician, a psychiatrist, an ophthalmologist, a zoologist, a gynecologist, an herbologist is any more definitive than calling me by name. Because somehow the letters AA, BA, MFA, LDS, EE, DD, or PHD are supposed to make me who I am. / I cannot be defined by the classes I took or the papers I wrote or the tests I failed. I am far more complex than that and I refuse to be satisfied with a label, so when you ask me what I’m doing in school, what I’m going to do afterward, and I tell you I’m gonna teach home economics, don’t look at me like I’ve gone off the deep end, like I’m wasting my brains and wasting my time and wasting my money, like I’m negating every feminist victory and reinforcing female stereotypes. Don’t look at me like I’m never gonna make a living, never gonna make anything of myself, because it’s my brains and my time and my money, my living and my self. / And how else can I be, how else can I fit my definition if I give in to the pressures of you, the pressures of him, the pressures of them, the pressures of it, and do what someone else thinks is right for me because they want me to be defined by what I do instead of who I am. I am a girl who snores when she’s sick and hiccups after she eats. I’m the girl who dated your youngest son and had a crush on your older brother. I’m the wild woman in love with her mountain man. I’m the girl that is sometimes eloquent and often awkward and twice as likely to hug you as shake your hand. I am the adult who eats peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with a tall glass of ice cold milk and the Floridian, who if offered a slice of pea-can pie would say “Don’t you mean pe-cahn?”
6
Mar 24, 2010
don't ask meDon't ask me / To share your burden. / I'm weary,
12
Oct 8, 2009
edgeDangling on the edge of sleep with something on my mind; / A shadow of a dream, perhaps, or something of its kind. / The fabric of the umbrella chatters in the gale
12
Oct 8, 2009
empty wordsThese empty words / Fall from my lips / Like so many imperfect pearls.
29
Oct 8, 2009
end itI'm done with this. / I don't want a part in it anymore. / Leave me out of it.
19
Jan 13, 2010
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