Everyday Escapees

My poor students, all I ask of them is to grow antennae, lie down with lava and rise with snow, grow tongues from their math assignments and no, Melissa, your mother won’t approve of the bioluminescent smear on your communion dress. The world fidgets in uneasy relationship to our statements about it nevertheless producing silver buds from ragged limbs like the luster in late Frank Sinatra songs. Finally, when I got off the sixth floor, I felt like I was walking out into the sky and aren’t we all pedestrians of air? Doesn’t it feel all wrong to turn our backs on the ocean? On an ant? On those Chagall windows you have to go through a gauntlet of ancient armor to get to? What was her name, that night nurse so deft her blood draws didn’t wake me up? Don’t get me wrong, I want to wake up. I want my old dog to show me all that wolf-light she hides inside even though she thinks I won’t understand, even though her vet and I conspire to keep her alive forever.