January 8, 2013

the learning curve

She'd hate to confess what she's never been good at: taxes, paperwork,
party pleasantries, making returns, lodging complaints with customer service.
She could say - each time she picks up the phone or lugs the wrong-sized whatever back
to where it came from - that the learning curve is high, and the field bright with possibilities.
But instead, she whittles herself into a boxy cutout, child mind stumbling over each syllable,
lost in the thicket of foreign tongues and rituals, and the best she can do is improvise...
and not very good, at that. I want to tell her faltering and innocence make her no less lovable.
I want to tell her not all seedlings make it through the rain, but the soil still bustles
with potential, its scent sweetened with ruin. I want to show her the dance she’s weaving
out of each inexpert shuffle, the beauty in her awkward truth, if she’d only start believing.