June 11, 2024

I’m so delighted to share Concord, Massachusetts reader (and 7th grade English teacher) Laura Regis’s artistic response to my poem, “in praise of I don’t know.” 
So delighted, in fact, that I’ve written a wobbly shape of a poem to Laura, in response to her creation. 

helium
for Laura

She sat on a stiff couch, her back against a frilly pillow, a gift that didn’t really 
suit the décor of the house, which smelled like banana bread, made fresh 
that morning, cold enough for slippers, which she wore as if they were 
too small, even though they weren’t, which is how she felt in certain 
conversations that hovered in the safety zone of small talk, as if her heels 
were spilling over the edges, mutinous, daring the rest of her to step outside 
the lines, filmy as they were, and she wondered what it would take, 
what bold strike she’d level against any proceedings that stayed too tepid 
for their own good, so she started with the couch and the pillow, pushing herself 
from the room like a burst of helium, and she is rising out of herself even as I…