Part of being an artist is learning
how to let your work speak for itself on display.”
I didn’t know I was failing or that I was
at risk to not graduate. I figured I still had time
to produce more. Anything. To retake the class.
How could I have been so careless to think
that there would be more time?
I should have known better.
There is never enough time.
Ms. Wex slid across a piece of paper
with a date, a time, and an address.
I looked at my lonely painting on the easel.
A frayed edge of canvas.
It looked exactly the way I intended,
even though it took me this entire semester
just to get over the fear of making
this painting, that I didn’t have to
let go of the grief; I just had to let it all out.
I watched Ms. Wex’s eyes drift over to my painting,
then dart back to mine. Like she was afraid of it.
Of what it might mean and say.
Part of me wanted to take the painting
and shove it in a closet forever,
but I folded up the piece of paper
into a stubby little square
and pocketed it in my bag.
because maybe if I did hang it up on a wall,
maybe if Ms. Wex, if I, if all of us,
stared at the painting long enough,
we would stop being so afraid.
Row
I know I shouldn’t put
this much weight
on a single text.
But I do.
Because every second
Ariana fails to answer
I worry about
who we have
become.
I want us to be something
that resembles a family.
Like a soccer team,
all running around a field
in choreographed patterns,
heading toward the same goal.
But that’s not what our family is.
It’s a frayed string of lights
that someone needs to fix
with electrical tape.
It’s the electricity
that can’t get to us
because Mom’s bulb
has burned out,
so now the whole string is dark.
But without the lights turned on,
does anyone even notice
that we are broken?
Ariana
The overhead storage is too narrow for my painting.
The floor space too dirty. The seat next to me,
not wide enough. I settle on resting the painting
on my knees and lean it against the seat back in front of me.
Air is blasting through tiny vents overhead,
smelling like strangers. A guy in front of me
eats a bag of chips, an elderly woman
hugs a reusable bag. Her eyes dart around.
Her shoulders fold inward. She hugs
the bag tighter as people pass her by,
like she’s afraid of something.
Is it the snowstorm brewing outside?
The safety record of the driver?
Is it the place that she’s headed
or what she’s leaving behind?
Or is she just afraid of the rest of us
trying to steal all her stuff?
Sometimes I wonder what people think about.
Whether their feelings are intense, like mine,
or completely ordinary and mundane.
Sometimes I wonder what it might be like
to spend a whole day thinking about small,
insignificant things. Like the scratchiness
of the seat fabric or the steady breeze of recycled air.
The driver releases the brake, the bus rolls forward.
I take a few breaths, sink down into the upholstered seats,
trying to feel excited that I’m here,
doing something, anything,
not just for a passing grade,
but to convince myself that I don’t have to be so scared
of the future. I don’t have to be scared of the past.
Row
I stare at the screen, rereading
the unanswered text.
I think back to the first month of school.
When the captain of the soccer team
called out to me
in the hall.
She stood in the center
of a circle of senior girls
talking with confidence
about weekends and parties and classes.
I shifted my weight
from one leg to the other.
Tucked the short ends
of hair behind my ear.
“Great game last night, Twenty-four.”
“Uh-huh,” I said,
but I wasn’t really
paying attention.
I spotted Ariana.
Her thick and loose ponytail.
The yellow cardigan
that matched a pair of sneakers
I had in my closet.
I saw a girl who looked like me,
but wasn’t me.
I watched Ariana
duck around the corner
as soon as I caught her eye.
She saw me.
But it’s like here in high school
she didn’t even know me.
The senior girls were staring.
“That’s your sister?”
one of them said,
the blond one
people called “Busy”
and I never really knew
whether it was
a given name,
a nickname,
or a reputation.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Huh. I don’t recognize her,”
the one named Rory said.
The captain nudged her.
“She’s in our English class.”
“Really?”
“Isn’t she friends with that girl
from that band? You know, the band
that actually ended up making it,”
Busy said.
They all tilted their heads
peering into the vacated space
that Ariana once occupied,
then back at me.
Sometimes it’s like
Ariana disappeared
altogether.
I run into
my best friend, Kennedy,
without even trying.
I see half the team
every time I use the bathroom.
But I could go days on end
without seeing Ariana anywhere.
“But she’s so quiet,” said Rory.
I tilted my head and tried to see
Ariana the way her classmates saw her.
But I couldn’t.
She wasn’t a mystery, or a rumor,
or a quiet girl who sat in the back of class.
She was my sister, and that’s all I could see
in the vacated space.
A shadow once occupied by my sister.