curriculum

Frostbite

Ever since I was a child, I had a fear of frostbite. It starts off as a shiver, slowly progressing into a burn until finally, an agonizing ripple trembles throughout your entire body. Now, part of you has to be amputated, altering your life forever. To reassure my emotional state my father would tell me, “Although it will never grow back, it will always be there.”, I have no idea why that made me feel better, but it comforted me that it comforted him. A part of my father was amputated at age seven, sitting on his own father’s lap, until he wasn’t anymore. What would be different now if that dismemberment never happened? A part of my dad was ripped away, ripped away like a tongue stuck on a frozen pole, like a band-aid you’ve had on for too long. Except this band-aid is still there, staying sewn into my father’s heart for forty-seven years and counting.

Missing Teeth

There is a trick to removing a loose tooth, you tie a string to it and then the string to a door handle. Someone then slams the door as hard as they can, and most times the tooth will come out. I remember doing this as a child and sobbing, not because of the pain, but because my tooth was missing. I wonder if that was how my father felt as a child too. Unlike an amputation, a missing tooth will grow back, but the pain of its absence is not a memorable one. Now trying to overcompensate for its truancy, you hold on too tightly to the things you might loose in the future. You may not remember loosing the tooth, but you will remember the feeling it leaves once it’s gone. People grow from these experiences, typically leaving an adult pair of teeth to replace the ones gone, but in some cases, like my father’s, people still have a few gaps in their smile.

Blue Flowers

Everyday it feels like someone is pouring water from a vase down my throat, it only fills half way, but I can feel every inch of it, it grows something inside of me. I am slowly drowning myself in blue flowers, hopefully my father will like them. I want to give him an inspiration, maybe in work, in happiness… in a daughter. The only problem with that, is the blue flowers are unattainable, something no one can reach, like a level of Nirvana. Flowers also die, you can shower them with passion and the effect is a petal succumbing to gravity’s nature. They can’t love you back either, the relationship is you, giving and giving as a caretaker, receiving nothing in return; a stand still, a windmill without the wind to help prosper its well-being.