In the Blink of an Eye
I’m six years old, lying in front of the swamp cooler so it blows directly in my face. The recycled air smells gross— like spoiled vegetables, or like the Irish Spring soap my mom uses to get rats out of her car— but it’s better than the skin-peeling, concrete-cooking 103° outside. It needs to be cleaned. (It won’t, as far as I know, not until the next family moves into apartment 36.) An old episode of Buffy plays in the background (my sister’s choice) as my dad makes cornbread in the little kitchen. Nothing bad has happened to me yet.
Poetry
The word “poetry” comes from the Latin poiesis, meaning “making”. That’s the literal meaning, at least— metaphorically, I think poetry can come from anywhere. But I find even the literal meaning poetic: poetry is intrinsically tied to that most human desire, to create. Back to the metaphorical sense, though, I think everything is poetry. People are poetry. Nature is poetry. Music is poetry. It might be overly sentimental of me to say that, but I think it’s true. Isn’t it amazing how many cultures invented poetry completely independently? Japanese haikus, Scandinavian bragging, Judeo-Christian psalms… I think poetry is the pinnacle of the human experience.