Poem A Day: Upon Sharing my Notebook with Students

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When I place my open notebook

under the camera,
it feels like surgery.
Here... her open clavicle.
Here... her separated ribcage.
Here... her beating heart.



"Look, look at it," I say.

"You have this too. Open it. Show it. Share."



Take a picture if you want.

Probe it. It will bleed for you.
I wonder, can they see the 
rips and tears
the bruises that appear from
their stories?


The weight they carry.

The crosses they have borne.
The chips and cracks in their small hearts.


 I hope I show them
the emptiness doesn't last.
The weight is not forever.
That underneath the pain, is life.
Is beauty.
Is the growing of green things from cracked earth.

Even though my own cracks get deeper,
the bruises darker,
every year,
I still offer it.
It is all I have to give.

This poem started out as a page in my writer's notebook. I found the picture on Pinterest, but I spent a month of art class drawing this (my version of it). The poem started out as a free write from my school writers' group. I kept revisiting it, feeling like I had the seeds of something good. I went back to it several times during the Slice of Life Challenge, but never got it to exactly where I wanted. I woke up this morning with a final copy in my head. 
                                                                         

Comments

  1. Deb DayApril 3, 2018 at 7:34 PM

    Amazing. I don't know what i love the best. But I do know that opening your notebook and your heart to your students, while scary, is so valuable to them. It shows them right away that your's is a safe room. A place to bear it all. If you do it, so can they.

    That last stanza by the way....

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mrs. Trivedi-ZiembaApril 4, 2018 at 10:04 AM

    I like structure of your poem.

    Re: Sharing our writing
    Our daughter and I write together each day -or try to write - there was a dry spell of week when we can't coordinate and did not write together. Reading aloud and sharing the writing is a shared experience I look forward to each day. One of us suggests a prompt for writing.

    Happy sharing.

    Purviben
    http://www.coolcatteacher.com/

    ReplyDelete

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