Repeat

Until that lunch when we broke out some MREs
you had never told me all those memories.
There are years you'd probably never even think about
if they weren't arranged in layers in the closets of this house.
And I never really realized just how far my poems go back,
but there were quite a few scattered through that schoolwork stack.
The smell of drying leaves and dryer sheets
brings me back to university.
And then there's all the warmth and chill I can remember
when I hear the song I played on repeat last November.

9/11

About half of my life ago
I watched two towers fall
on TV screens in middle school.
I heard worry in the hall
and crying friends with family
on business trips that day.
And we all just wanted to know
if we would be okay.
And we were, to our surprise.
Not much changed for us.
Just one day class didn't happen
and they might have cancelled the bus.
And life went on with news of war
but we hardly understood.
And we got used to confusing news
and knowing less than we should.

Spring Inside

Spring smells like my college town, the last place I smelled spring,
and it's like I'm in Kentucky in the morning when birds sing,
and the breeze is Colorado with the window open wide,
and now I realize how much spring I've bottled up inside.