Job changes and memories taking root
poetry from ‘spirit world with geoa’
it’s smoky outside, the trees blurry in sunset warmth, oranges bleeding together in amongst the cedar green, fall, falling, breath, short
i sat this week, i played valorant, i shot people with grenades, i failed at team-based communication in a japanese server, google translate open on my phone as i fumble to learn fps computer lingo and three other languages, vietnamese and sass and gomen nasaiii, so many words for I’m sorry in Japanese, in games, in life. “heta” my teammate said to us right after we’d lost a close game. “unskillful, poor, awkward, imprudent, untactful” google tells me,
i sigh, I
was offered a new job? this one in a high school, queer blue eye shadow, sparkles and sorrow and loss stencilled in amongst crop tops and community and COVID and capitalism, our eyes twitching
will there be a shooter today?
i hope not as I stretch, my hoodie soft against my skin as i close my eyes and feel my tummy.
we can do this, but there’s no time to really see or be or process or breathe,
I already miss the preschool i worked at and playing outside,
joy and running and scrapes and bruises, the color of learning and friendship and wrestling and consentual touch, soft hands, we say, are they ok with playing like that?
did you ask?
languages and lisps and heartbreak, learning boundaries intermingled with tears and hugs and lava monsters, dinosaur roars and kinetic sand
we are all such baffling and delightful humans at any age but am i really going back to high school?
a high school?
my heart dark with anxiety, I feel the soft touch of memories from my own time there, walking across softly forested paths to a farass frisbee field, leaving the trees to see empty fields, my friends sitting in stillness and looking at the clouds
I ache, with memories and know
I might
break
but
i will do my best to to foster connections and a community that can fight back with teeth within/against this heavy, broken system that we are given, unions and students and staff and teachers with a voice and not a small amount of knives and paint and anger
I hope we find the path through before the darkness whispers its final words, before we lose ourselves, before it’s too late,
please
save us and save yourselves, eat the magic and be free, find the community tools that have saved us for a millenia
we need frameworks that actually help us, fam
please
❤
geoa
❤
