Rewriting Through the Pinhole

She said, Your writing is getting better. And I thought, Dang. Why'd you have to go and say that.

I chewed it on Saturday
Not like a compliment presently stated but as a question hurdling me back to that question I've always wondered and now
I'm questioning everything.
It's not her fault that I'm made of glass that I crumple into a ball
By one earnest attempt of -
Look at how far you've come!
From that writing genesis,
My first trembling paperthin skin poem.
I'm too fond of her to rip her up completely.
It's been 30 years for crying out loud.
But in the beginning I shredded her
In newborn ink and have been thinking all this time:
Whoa-ey, wow, That's powerful stuff!
But. Am I really?

My friend's passing comment gave me permission to reconsider
What I've already questioned:
Should I certainly, yes, certainly
Reshred that shredded poem and throw myself a quick
Confetti night celebration of quiet failure to
Rewrite and rewrite, again?
The meaning's there beyond the words.
If only I had someone to invite.

You see, I don't know where to begin to unearth
My buried self, faltering backward back to
A pinhole in the ground where I hid
And laid an unsure girl down low to rest. Shall I find
those painful bones and break them again to tell her that she must
Try again?

Meanwhile on Friday,

I followed a minivan mother literally a soccer mom, her daughter on
My daughter's soccer team following the game.
That is, before I was running behind
Very late and holding everyone down with
An apology stuck to my eyes.
I just made sure not to let my honesty stare straight into theirs,
That painful three word confessional speech of
I'm so sorry.
Instead, I stood in one neutral spot on the sidelines and her,
Standing on my same sideline
Safely thinking we were all the same kind of same sided people.
Yes we are! I cheered for us all, myself included, a rare
Mental exclamation! To be part of something bigger than me.
I was feeling pretty good right where I stood
Pretending I could win by watching.

But after the game she burned rubber ahead, and me,
Trying to catch up to her
Illinois license plate, that one she earned after she
Decided with a bright feather pen upon DMV lines
To wear a moving proclamation on her frontside
And on her backside
To protuberantly e-nun-ci-a-te
Who she is. POETS 4
She states in bold everywhere she goes.
One intimidating minivan eyebrow raised
Better than I, and leaving me to cower behind her whoa-ey wow ability to
Shout herself with an alphabetical combination followed by
4 times something I could never ink blot on my "Hello My Name Is" tag
That I have a tendency to stick to the bottom of my shirt sleeve
So no one can read what I've written.
I'm just the simple mark questioning her statement even though
I wish sometimes I wouldn't
Ask so many questions.

But there in front, Chrysler Town and Country shook her finger
A thousand beautiful miles long.
Say yourself out loud! Yes! Say yourself out loud!
I say why
When I am safer hitched behind a person who can drive exactly what
I cannot.
But I let her go.
Pressed down on my heart and broke.
Rolled to a slow stop and lost her. She, writing through her green, green light.
And me, red to still.

Through my 6th Street glass road
I looked to the side where I no longer stood
To try and find my poem, the girl through the pinhole
Who needs me to pry open my car door
And cheer her back up. Her silence rising from
Way down there. But I was feeling sick.
Not from the motion.
But from stillness.
I fixed my eyes ahead.

And beyond the words I read a sign of courage
To dash my instinct to climb out of me and crawl away from the scene
Because
I am carrying precious cargo I need to get somewhere
And though I don't know what's inside I know that I must remain
To play this game and to cry when I lose
And even if I win.
If you can imagine that.

And maybe I am better now than who I was and
That's what my friend was cheering in my ear
From the sideline of my life.
Go, she pointed, not with her finger but with her heart
Not permitting me but prohibiting me
From vanishing into that paperthin skin side of me
That side of me that says I need to say I'm sorry every time I sputter
Inch by nervous inch ahead toward the next red light up there
My pinhole poem growing smaller from
Flickering green light intersections where I can either
Keep apologizing for every last word I've written
Or just grow a pair and write the next word.
The one that kicks me in the gut and pulls my soul by a string.
And, I meant soccer balls, by the way.

Maybe I'm not a minivan
but okay, I'll do it. State without a mark of question
Okay maybe still with doubt
That I might actually be on the field and no longer on the sideline.
My daughter is my daughter and her daughter is her daughter and there's
Enough poets 4 all of us to love.

She said, Your writing is getting better
To tell me
Regardless if I am POETS 5 or POETS 5 hundred thousand and 5
I can live with my own alpha-numeric combination of uncertainty
To say what I need to say beneath my unsure plate of armor
This one here that I wear without vanity

Not on the frontside of me
Or the backside of me
But italicized with humility
On the 6 point font inside of me
That I must certainly, yes, certainly
Rip her up and
try again.