MONDAYS ARE FREE EXERCISES 186 —190

[The Stage is on Fire] is a page-turner in which, much like life, there are no easy answers and yet each step of the journey yields insight and hope. This work of heart must not be missed!

Melanie Faith

Creative Writing Teacher, Essayist & Poet.

Katie Steedly’s first-person piece [The Unspeakable Gift] is a riveting retelling of her participation in a National Institutes of Health study that aided her quest to come to grips with her life of living with a rare genetic disorder. Her writing is superb.

The Society of Professional Journalists

In recognition of receiving the Dateline Award for the Washingtonian Magazine essay, The Unspeakable Gift.

I thank you … It is the authenticity of your “class notes”; and it is the delicacy and skill with which you present the nuances of classroom life and the actuality of your students’ and fellow teachers’ lives.

Maxine Greene

Philosopher and Education Scholar

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MONDAYS ARE FREE EXERCISES 186 —190

Leaving. Tension. Heartbreak. Invitation. Goodbye.

EXERCISE 186: DOCUMENT THE LEAVING

not dear to you

Freewrite for as long as you can about leaving a person or a place that was not dear to you.

I quit my first teaching job the Friday before Christmas vacation my second year teaching. I was 27 years old — young and on fire, creative and committed, ready to thrive like a plant in the summer sun after a perfectly rainy spring. The job was my dream job. I dreamed and trained and worked toward it for years. I busted my ass working with students, leading rehearsals, planning lessons, grading papers, talking with parents, building sets, managing facilities.

The job was dear. I had to leave.

I was crushed under the weight of “work smarter not harder.” I was crushed under the weight of asking for help and being ignored. I was crushed under the weight of new teacher tears falling on industrial tile floors.

Leaving meant boxing up my books in the dark night, rolling up my posters and taping them closed, returning my keys to a colleague who had become a friend, completing my lesson plans and tests for the end of semester — just in case they would have a substitute teacher do anything but have a study hall, and hiring a lawyer to write a letter to explain my departure and make sure I would not be sued for breaking my contract.

Leaving was hard and right. Hard, like not being able to say good-bye to my students and colleagues. Hard, like learning we can want things so much we can taste it and have that still not be enough. Hard, like watching a dream burn. Right, like I could not survive a life carrying that weight. Right, like Wallace Stevens’ search for a blue guitar. Right, like unmistakable knowing.

EXERCISE 187: SET UP THE TENSION

wonder about what transpired

Write a one-paragraph scene between you and a loved one in which you wonder about what transpired.

I deleted the email so I could not read it 1000 times. (Deleting an email to stop the blood flow after a deep wound has happened several times. This time was different.) I began to perform a solitary autopsy in my journal. Day-after-day cutting through skin, pulling out body parts, examining the pieces of a 30-year friendship that was forever changed. Corpses don’t lie. The memory can morph from anger to disbelief to something else and back again and again. The memory can move between nostalgia and sadness and joy. The memory remains in a liminal space of half truths, song lyrics, and frayed images. Every day for months I wrote while crying and wondering. I am not sure when I forgot the specifics of how it all went down — an email, unreturned phone calls, unanswered texts, a radical haircut, a two-year delayed birthday text, a condolence text (sent after hearing about a LinkedIn post). Over time, my certainty about my rightness has waxed and waned. How could a best friend burn it all down without conversation? What does trust look like after the fire? When numbness sets in, is there anything left to say? What do you do when there is nothing left to say?

EXERCISE 188: RESTRUCTURE YOUR HEARTBREAK

the story

Write the story of your heartbreak in seven paragraphs. Paragraph one should be seven sentences long, each sentence exactly seven words. Paragraph two, six sentences, each sentence six words. Paragraph three, five sentences… and so on… until paragraph seven, which is one word long.

She asked me to sign an agreement. The agreement had definite and unacceptable terms. I could not agree and that ended us. The us quietly ebbed and then flowed. The us existed beyond time’s true language. The us remembered voices of the passed. The us believed we would be old together.

It all sounds so perfectly logical. I hear about reasons, seasons, lifetimes. I hear about ebbs, flows, and grace. A link teaching me to forgive. A link with not one word. I had already listened to it.

Silence dropped like a hammer. I could not look around. I could not look, photos. I blocked what I could. I could only look within.

I sought care daily. I sought understanding daily. I sought acceptance daily. I sought peace daily.

We fall apart. We fall together. Life goes on.

We learn. We grow.

Compassion.

EXERCISE 189: EXTEND THE INVITATION

precise and intimate

Today you’re going to write a poem to someone you miss, maybe they are dead, and maybe they will meet you where you used to meet.

I miss you, LG. Let’s meet at The Cheesecake Factory and eat chocolate cake. Let’s celebrate finished chapters. Let’s celebrate new chapters. Let’s listen to Bowie and hug Lennon. Let’s dance the rock lobster and remember it all. Let’s get tattoos and wear glitter eye shadow. Let’s giggle and cry. Let’s have snacks and take naps. Let’s study kindness and live wide-awake. Let’s shut the door and tell truths. Let’s run fast together.

EXERCISE 190: SAY GOODBYE

to everything

Write a poem that says goodbye to everything you need or want or might have to say goodbye to.

Goodbye to bread and cheese and chocolate. Goodbye to anxiety and self loathing and fear. Goodbye to separateness and isolation and doubt. Goodbye to lying and anger and denial. Goodbye to stomach aches and sore ankles and bad eyesight. Goodbye to knots and fists and butterflies. Goodbye to peeling paint and small washing machines and broken toilets. Goodbye to tight jeans and bikinis and roots.

Thank you for reading MONDAYS ARE FREE. These exercises are explorations of poetry and language and joy. Subscribe to the Wide-Awakeness Project to share this journey.