Mesh bathing suit slips

Into the hot, steaming mug

To brew my Earl Grey.

I just jotted this down after sitting down at my desk and putting a sachet of Lady Grey in my mug of hot water. I dunked it a few times and then watched as it slid slowly, relaxingly down the side of the black ceramic into the round and dark puddle of steaming water, little bubbles floating up from the sugar I had just dumped in. It reminded me very much of a woman sinking down into a hot tub, sinking in up to her shoulders with a trail of hair cascading over the side of the tub. So, I wrote this. I was drinking Lady Grey (a favorite of mine though it does resemble Fruit Loops rather closely), but wrote the poem about Earl Grey for the syllable difference and because it’s far more recognizable. The cup of tea emptied, I now write this.

I love poetry. I’ll get some of mine back up here on the page soon, I trust. The husband’s working on that code off and on this week, so it will probably be soon. I want the comments function on my poetry page because I like knowing when people understand what I’ve written or not. Three creative writing courses solely on poetry coupled with nearly countless English and French classes on literature with poetry included has made me something of a poetry critic though far from an expert. I know what I like, and I know how to write what I like.

I have been writing poetry since the third grade, and while I won’t claim that anything from my eight-year-old period is any good, it does go to show how long I’ve had a love for language, its sounds, rhythms, quirks, and intricacies. I’ll lay claim to about a quarter of the poetry I wrote in high school; most of it is the over-personal, imageless and trite drivvel that depressed and moody high schoolers are prone to. Since then, I’ve become driven by imagery and sound, almost to the point of becoming something of a minimalist with my words and works. Oddly enough, this succinctness does not spill over into my prose, which is riddled with verbosity and which borders on the didactic. My fiction is long-winded, my poetry curt. It’s an odd separation which I make, but it doesn’t hinder my writing in any way whatsoever.

I write. That’s who I am. Most would say, “That’s part of who I am,” but I disagree. This is me. Since the older sis taught me to read when I was three or four, I have been writing. Unlike most, I can’t remember a time when I couldn’t read or write. This is me, and this is what I do. I put it forth to you (the four or five of you who frequent this site) to read not because I expect you to get it but because I expect you to see that this is who I am and this is what I do. An artist hangs her paintings in her home, and I present my poems at readings, in person, on my walls, on my site, wherever I can. It’s a bit like my cross-stitches, I suppose.

This isn’t where I intended this rant to go, but since it’s here, I guess I’ll leave it. I’ve been half-asleep here at work all morning thanks to early wake-up calls from the cat and Benadryl in response to the perfume of those in the office. The tea I made was meant to wake me up so that I could work on my class or my thesis, but instead it woke up a deeper part of me, a more familiar and comforting part which so rarely gets to see the light of day thanks to work and worries. Thank you, Lady Grey. You make life more beautiful.