Popcorn

My words don't come

in anything other

than my voice, and

my voice doesn't come

in size-12 Times New Roman;

It comes in butterfly wings and 

cluttered poems and ideas that

I am chanting verse 9 of my first aliyah,

a bowl of blackberries and apple cinnamon Cheerios beside me,

fingers twirling the spoon, when -

out the window, there is snow.

To be American is to

Listen to the rain fall and to

Let it wash over our faces, just

As all who came before us did

(not just the founding fathers did but

the children, the mothers, those

Batman toasters gave me you.

They gave me a best friend

who laughed with me when no one else would

and ran away from the wasps during recess

(we always went near the fence/shade from trees)

precisely one year ago i went to school after election day and felt like driftwood in an uncertain sea.