One Day, You'll Teach Me- a trip down memory lane

"Look, Dad, a crystal! Look, it's really shiny!" I almost throw it at him in my excitement.
"What is it?" I ask impatiently the moment it touches his hands.
"It's quartzite, see the lines? Those are inclusions."
"One day, you'll teach me." The voice echoes through time.
"It doesn't feel smooth." I look down and throw it back, determined to find something more beautiful.
"Dad, help me find beach glass!"
"You go ahead, sweetheart."
All of the memories blur together in the chilly classroom. Was that one day? Did we find something more beautiful? Are these memories mine or do they belong to someone else? They belong to a different time, of that I am sure. There was a time, a brief point where we were a happy family. Maybe solely a moment. I sit on the beach and look left and right, I look down to my wrist and to my empty hands. I get up and walk slowly over to the children I'm watching, "How's it going?" They giggle, pleased to be on the beach rather than at camp. I was so hot that day, I remember, turning a page, digging out from under a pile of autumn work. Was I hot that day? Was that the hottest day of the summer when the children were begging to swim? I simply don't remember. Have I gotten so busy that all of my days have blurred together, marked solely by the progress of my work?
I see his hand, finger pointed. I feel his breath on the back of my neck, "24." I turn around, looking up.
"How do you know that?"
"One day you'll teach me."
His voice echoes through time and I look around my table at the faces examining me over their stacks of pancakes. I find no traces of the timeless echo.
I look around, the smell of pancakes filling my dorm. I had forgotten, had not heard the ripples through time. I still find no trace and I realize that I never used to like pancakes.
"This is Anjelica." He says proudly. She doesn't know who I am, just that she should.
"This is my daughter." He says proudly. She already knows, I just wish she didn't. This memory fills me with shame.
"Daddy!" No one answers.
"Look what I got you! Come give me a hug!"
"He took that out of his food money." Her voice breaks my reverie. My mind begins to race and my eyes threaten to spill over again.
"Do you remember that?"
"No," I panic, "Why don't I remember that? I should remember that." I furrow my brow and look away.
"I don't remember anything." I say, crying.
"I should have turned out differently." I pause, "I should have been a completely different person." I whisper to myself, knowing the walls would never tell of my secret confession.
"I'll see you soon, right?"
"I'll talk to you soon. Love you." He rushes.
"Yeah, I love you, too."
I feel rejected.
"You'll come to see me soon?"
"Um, yeah. I love you." I rush.
"I love you too."
So many people have come and gone. Some left bigger holes that I would ever admit. Some I thought were irreplaceable, but I look to my left and to my right and smile. There's so much love in my life.
"One day you'll teach me." The voice echoes on.
It was love that put me here.

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Non-Sequitor

Once upon a time there was a fish. This fish was not like ordinary fish, he could talk like a person, eat like a person, breath like a person. The only thing he couldn't do was love like a person. One day an attractive stewardess saw this fish and thought he was really cute! “Great success!” thought the fish. So they went on a date. The hot stewardess noticed that the fish was making no advances on her. “Phooey!” she thought, “this fish must be sick, we wouldn't touch me with a 6 meter stick.” Later she would tell her friends, “I decided the only solution was to seduce him.”
So she took off her top, and took off his bottom, and immediately realized the source of the problem. It had nothing to do with her hotness or worth. It all was a factor of his minimal girth.
“Now what to do?” she pondered. She thought of the problem, and struggled and fought. Then the answer came to her in a flash, “I'll become a fish with a mighty fine ass!”

So children you see, how the solution was won.
It wasn't so much that she had been blind to the truth.
It was just that she had seen the truth differently.

A poem for the weekend

There are jelly fish in my brain
I don't know how they got there
I've tried to blow them out
And catch them in a paper
But they just gurgle
and stay put

Except at night

A night they like to see what's outside
and they seep out through my nostril
to say hello to the world
leaving goo on my pillow
and goo on my face

They like to pulsate in my head
and take little nibbles off my brain
it makes it hard to think
or move
or do anything but sleep

maybe I should swallow a turtle
or a sun fish