Teacher

You dazzle me with your stories 

of alignment, and of wild things;

your forward movement into the plausible

blows my mind,

opens my skittish heart,

catapults my pen,

forces a time limit,

squeezes perfection to

bleed secrets onto the page.

I abandon my addiction

to the perfect word

to avoid the sinking feeling 

triggered by fleeting grains of sand

in your menacing timer.

You ask me to write 

about impossible things,

read aloud before I am ready

and in doing so

remind me

how small I can be,

and how big I am;

and how resistant I am to risk,

to being vulnerable.

It all leaves me hungry for

full presence in my stories, 

and the desire more than ever,

to tell them so others feel my words.