The tree branches whipping against the windows at 7 in the morning leave me less than inclined to open my eyes. Maybe if I hold onto my dreams the monster won’t get me. I’d been having nice dreams. They’d been dreams where I’d felt loved and seen.
Splashes of ice cold water cast themselves against the walls of my skin in vain efforts to wake me up. The coffee from Dr. Kriner’s office does a better job at knocking at my heart’s door and stirring me to life. I sip it black and drink my fill of the raspy sounds of T.S. Eliot’s poetry.
Am I good enough? his poetry asks.
***
Who determines where we belong and where we do not belong? Is it the people with whom we wish to belong? Is it those with whom we wish not to belong? Is it the long line of deafening societal tradition that bellows how we must belong somewhere or else we cannot be human? Is it ourselves?
***
Smoke in the walls and coffee stains. Lo-fi electronic beats and storytelling. Shots of water and lines of poetry we don’t understand.
River City is eclectic. It’s hipster. But dare we put it in a box? Slap a label on the front door and listen to the bell cease to jingle.
***
There’s a baseball covered in mud and sweat and exhaust fumes lying by the curb in the middle of a deserted neighborhood. Somehow the day doesn’t demand any more photos than that one, taken between the silence after rain and the energy after too much coffee.
***
“Jesus Christ alighted in a Jew’s daughter,” William Langland writes in his epic poem and allegory, “Piers Plowman.”
The women see Jesus. Nobody listens to them.
***
Eliana Chow 
Leave a Reply