writers and other things

starting now,

you guys can be writers and cheerleaders and writers and lacrosse players and writers and actors

you can be writers and singers and writers and designers and writers and dancers and writers and rappers and writers and pissed off and writers and kind and writers and everything

you can be good friends and writers and chefs and writers and hipsters and writers and artists and writers and AP students and writers

and you can be missionaries and writers and alcoholics and writers and make-up artists and writers and boyfriends and writers and girlfriends

and you can be writers

and you can be little sisters and writers and big sisters and writers and little brothers, big brothers, no brothers and writers

and you can be popular and writers and underdogs and writers and tall and writers and small and writers and business majors and writers and small business owners and writers and gardeners and writers and potheads and writers and procrastinators and writers and OCD and writers and ADHD and writers and LMNOP and writers and left-handed and writers and

I shouldn't have to give you permission, but here I am. 

On the Ropes

Round 1:
It all happens so fast, you don't even remember it.

Round 2:
You bob and weave, you have plenty of energy. One, two. One, two. You stick and move. You float like a butterfly and you smile.

Round 3:
You take a shot to the chin and your knees wobble. Your trainer reminds you to keep your hands up.

Round 4:
You hit your gloves together and go in for more.  You deliver a left-right combination that almost shocks the world. The crowd goes wild. This is what they paid to see.

Round 5:
You take a hit below the belt. You're gonna feel that one tomorrow. 

Round 6:
You see stars and hear bells ring. The ref gives you a standing eight count and asks you if you want to keep going. Yes. 

Round 7:
You're down again. One knee, looking for your mouthpiece. I swear it's around here somewhere. 

Round 8:
Flashback to watching fights with your dad when you were a kid. Saturday night and you never thought you'd lose him. Two more drinks and the lights almost go out forever. 

Round 9:
You're your father's son again. Jab, jab, jab, and dance. This is what it's supposed to look like. Jab, jab, jab, and boom. Haymaker. The crowd's behind you and Disney's thinking about making a movie.

Round 10:
"This kid's got heart."
 
Round 11:
A lull. It happens every couple of rounds. We only have so much energy. You dance and hug, dance and hug. This thing's almost over. 

Round 12:
This is it. It feels like the end, but it lasts forever. Bright lights, crowd cheering, trainers yelling. This is it. You don't knock him out, but he doesn't knock you out either. The bell rings and you wait for the decision.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow was supposed to be just another day.

I took my contacts out, I set my alarm, I got ready.

Then Twitter delivered bad news again. Bad news, bad news. It's all we seem to get anymore even though we tried to cancel our subscription 5 years ago.

No matter how many times it happens, you're never ready.

Never ready.

Why Lone Peak?
whylonepeakwhylonepeakwhylonepeakwhylonepeak

I shouldn't be up this late. I shouldn't be down on the couch. I'm 35 years old, I shouldn't be crying. I shouldn't be writing. If anything, I should be coming up with a new lesson for tomorrow. Because we definitely can't talk about dancing and how it relates to writing. And we definitely can't have our Oscars party.

And I wonder if I can smile, if I can say anything, if I can read another letter, if I will ever take roll again, if I should cancel all assignments from here on out. But teaching is the last thing on my mind.

It's midnight.

Everyone's awake right now trying to figure out if it's their fault.

Maybe it's my fault.

I don't blame you for keeping your son home from school tomorrow. And the next day and the next day. I can't imagine what parents must be thinking. What's in the water, what's in the library, what's in the hallways.

I feel like I've been studying for this question my whole life, but I don't know the answer.

I don't know the answer, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry to every student I don't know. I'm sorry for helping make a video called "We See You" and pretending that it meant something to everyone. I'm sorry for dress codes and expectations and stereotypes. I'm sorry for every time I locked my door during lunch because I wanted to eat lunch by myself. I'm sorry for Be the Change and the Tip Line and every assembly we've ever had. I'm sorry for having my sophomores read a book about a sad girl. I'm sorry for having my seniors write about death. I don't need to assign that topic ever again.

I'm sorry dear. I'm sorry that I asked you if you were awake and then told you the bad news. I should've let you sleep.

I'm sorry for spending 30 minutes in each of my classes today talking about sadness and how do we make things better and depression and how do we make things better and suicide and how do we make things better. If we did that today, what are we supposed to do tomorrow?

Maybe it's not my job to talk about these things. I am an English teacher. It is my job to prepare students for SAGE tests and make sure they know how to use semicolons and verbs. Semicolons and verbs, I am not a counselor. Semicolons and verbs, I am not a bishop. I am not qualified.

I'm sorry for 2008. I was offered a job at Hunter High School in West Valley the same weekend I was offered a job at Lone Peak in Highland. My first instinct was to choose the west side school, because that's where I was told the good teachers were needed. Those west side students needed to be saved. Those east side students would be just fine in spite of their teachers.

Most of them are.

But I've learned that we all need to be saved.

I love you. You're my student, I love you. You sit in my class and you never say anything, I love you. You raise your hand every time I ask a question, I love you. You're a stranger who's just trying to figure out what's going on up at that rich school, I love you. We're all trying to figure it out. You're a parent who thinks it's my fault, I love you. I know you just care about your daughter and you want answers. You want something to be done. You're my wife trying to sleep upstairs, I love you. You're my 10-year-old son asleep in his room. You have no idea what's going on and I promise I won't wake you up anytime soon. You like school, you think your teacher's nice, and you wear your heart on your sleeve. I love you. I don't want you to turn 11. I don't want you to turn 12. I'm scared of everything you'll encounter as a teenager.

Dear everyone in the whole world I've ever met and ever will meet,

Don't kill yourself. I love you.

I'll see you tomorrow.

Tomorrow was supposed to be just another day. But now it's 1am and tomorrow is today.

With a heavy heart,
Kyle Nelson

all the places we've lived

We grew up in the same city and maybe it was all meant to be. 

Maybe we're working off the same treasure map. 

Maybe we found the same cheat codes.

You grew up on Hathaway and I've been chasing you ever since.

You were the Presidential Suite, you were the bend in the road, the phantom that I drove past four times before I finally found. 

We've lived here for 14 years now, so I don't know how I could ever get lost.

Thank you for leaving the light on for me just in case.

We used to live on Riverside Drive, but it felt like it was main street. Home has always felt like main street.

I see you in every place, every city, every town.

Your map is written in braille - I can see it with my eyes closed.

A west side soul with Sandy hair

South Jordan hands and Lehi strength

But Rachel, dude, you have Taylorsville in your eyes. A West Jordan face with a K-Town booty.

Sure, I can still smell Ephraim smoke on your clothes

It's on all of our clothes

And your lips will always be Salt Lake.

We're surrounded by mink farms, but I can't smell anything. They say love is blind, we must have anosmia. Because our love is the shit.

Believe me, we've paid our H.O.A. dues.

we're done walking to zoos

We don't leave open our garage door
and our cat doesn't bring us dead birds anymore

See, Riverside was lonely. And Hathaway wasn't.

Sunnyside was cloudy and we could smell Asian food through the cinder block walls. 

We discovered new planets. 

We discovered new worlds.

But when we landed on Plymouth Rock, the foundation broke,

and the planes were so loud on Brittany Park that we thought they were going to land on our roof.

You are the road ahead and you're everything in my rear view mirror.
Your lip gloss tastes like 1999 and your laugh sounds like the future.

I keep putting my stuff in the back of moving vans, but my heart's always been in your hands.

 

I took a virtual tour of our future - it's full of light and unfinished basements.

Room to grow, room to grow.

We're as bright as the reception center lights ever were.

High School Love

For every high school couple I see that warms my heart, there are 10 that make me want to vomit. Like straight up - into the toilet - out the nose too - VOMIT.

Because they make me sick (like Strawberry Quik).

Holding hands instead of textbooks
Walking through the halls like they're on sandy beaches in Mexico
Like teenage love is gonna last forever
Like forever?
Forever ever, forever ever?
Like, we all know it ain't lasting till the end of the week

Because I heard from Bobby's cousin Ronnie that she didn't even want to go with him in the first place and did you hear what Katie said yesterday in the car unh unh unh oh no he didn't! Say what? He said what? 

And every day - all day - in every single hallway

Their sweaty fingers interlocked like the zippers on their backpacks or the braces on their teeth
sometimes they kiss outside my classroom and the braces on their teeth
cheetos and sugar free chocolate chip cookies everywhere
thanks Michelle Obama
the braces on their teeth, the braces on their teeth
HELP ME RHONDA

Maybe this Saturday we should have a benefit concert for PATIENCE
We need to raise awareness

Because these gangly teenagers with pointy elbows and malnutritioned hearts think they need to grow up and buy promise rings and anniversary presents when little do they know that they have the rest of their lives to turn into their parents.

And really, I'm just afraid you'll turn out like my parents.  Divorced at 33 with two kids. Two kids who met in high school. Divorced at 33 with two kids. Paying the light bill with monopoly money and signing all their checks with crayons.

We'll never be younger than we were yesterday
and why don't they make iPhone apps for do-overs?

Can't we just kiss without holding hands?

Can't I call you bae without having to change my Facebook status?

I mean, no disrespect, it's not just about getting busy or claiming land or breaking hearts. We're talking about practice. Not a game, not a game, not a game. We talking about practice.

You need more time to work on your crossover. This is your coach telling you to get on the line. No more one-on-one. We're playing zone. So move your feet and get your hands up.

lowercase musings

i don't know

i guess i'm just sick of these hipster blogs talking about crayons and cigarettes and the moon and the stars and our hearts and the way things used to be and i just want to do something different

i want to do something different, something different

i'm listening to christian rap right now and i want to do something different

my dad doesn't watch the super bowl with me anymore and i don't care how good the wings were

how am i supposed to go to church on super bowl sunday? this feels like a test, and i have test anxiety and there's a reason why i never got a scholarship

my favorite blogs write in lowercase these days and it bugs me, but here i am doing the same thing

i don't have time for punctuation and being an english teacher aint mean nothing to me sometimes;
sometimes i ask english teachers how they doing in the hall and they say

i'm doing well

i say good

i wish i had a bathroom in my classroom

[beatbox]

i wish i had a bathroom in my classroom

uhhh

i spend more time tickling my daughter than i spend listening to her

i wrote a poem about staying alive and this kid came in my classroom to tell me how depressed he was and all i could think of was how much i needed to finish the poem about staying alive

he was right in front of me

i need to do something different

stevie wonder did all these things when he was blind and i guess i just need to wake the eff up and look around

i faked my eye exam when i was 11 because i thought it'd be cool to have glasses

so here we are

Super Bowl Poetry

Let's put our tuxedos on tonight and take our butterflies out dancing, for tomorrow is near.

We're nervous, we're nervous. How long we've been waiting for this. We see everything happen before it ever happens. We'll close our eyes while visions of greatness float around in our minds.

These are the moments we've been waiting for.

We stay up late reading books about soldiers, trying to win the wars of tomorrow.

We wish our bones were light like bird bones, so we too could fly.

Birds and Soldiers, Birds and Soldiers. We are birds and soldiers. Fully hydrated, full of carbohydrates. Full of hope that we might remember the things we've been taught.

The world is watching. The world is finally watching. Are we fast enough? Are we strong enough? The world is watching, but really all that matters is our moms and dads.

We can hear the crowd already, but is mom smiling? Is dad proud? 

The ball never bounces as we expect it to, no matter how much we practice, no matter how much we pray. We'll chase our enemies with torches and one day ask god for mercy.

Our muscles got us here, but our victories will always only be found in our hearts.