Memory Lane

Chapter Seven

"Poetry is when an emotion has found a thought and when the thought has found words." -Robert Frost

Memory Lane: Chapter Seven

Despite showing up late every day last week, I still cannot pull my body out of bed early enough to make it to class on time. Not with the rate I've been walking, anyway. If I was to accept Kendall's offer of a ride, I would make it with plenty of time to spare. But each time she offers, panic bubbles deep in my chest and then drops to my stomach as a ball of anxiety. I wish I could accept her offer and think nothing of it, but I can't.

Blinking awake, I push myself into a sitting position on my bed and rest my feet on the plush, pink rug that my bed rests atop of. I stare down as the fluffy fibers of the rug shift between my toes as I sigh. Sitting next to my bedside, my mom's poetry journal rests opened to the page I left off on last night.

I eye it with a frown. My mom always knew the right things to say and the proper way to express all of her feelings on the page. If it weren't for her adding the names of every poet in her journal, it would be hard to distinguish her poetry from the most famous poets in the world.

On the bookshelf that Uncle Tim built rests the journal my mom bought me when I turned twelve and showed her one of the first poems I wrote. I wrote it on printer paper I had stolen from my dad's office, so each line was written with an awkward slant. She said that didn't take away from the pure beauty of my writing, but the next morning I came downstairs to a brand new poetry journal sitting at the kitchen table. It had faint lines for me to follow on the inside.

Even now, only half of the pages are filled. Most pages are home to original poems, a few from poets I discovered a love for, and some are singular lines that I said I would come back to. I have always been too critical of my writing to share any of my poems with people other than my mom and dad. As my parents, I knew that they weren't allowed to criticize my passion even if I was no good. Because of my own judgment, no one really knew that my love for poetry went beyond reading what others had written. I only had one original poem that I was truly confident in. So much so that I entered the local poetry contest to win the chance to share it with the entire town: the one I presented just hours before my entire life got turned upside down.

I was buzzing with elation when they called my name as the first place winner. Now, my body feels numb when I think of it. I won an entire contest by writing about my love for riding in the passenger seat. Yet that night, I lost everything because of it. Now, just being offered a ride and thinking of giving up the wheel sends me spiraling into anxiety. The irony almost makes me laugh.

My poem was published in the newspaper just like the contest promised, but the Wallingford Times was published weekly. Not much happened in our town, so the paper wrote about every event they could find. I'm sure the editors were leaping with joy that they had two major events occur in the same night. I wonder if they felt guilty for being relieved that they wouldn't have to publish another paper talking about the progress of the trees planted in the park and instead could cover one of the worst crashes anyone in town had seen.

Only one page away from my poem, complete with a photo of me beaming with my first place ribbon, is the article of the horrible accident on Memory Lane.

I've never been able to bring myself to read it. One look at the photo of our car, mutilated beyond recognition and lit up in fierce flames, had me balling up the newspaper and throwing it clear across the hospital room. Who wants to read about the story of their own parents' death? I witnessed it. That should give me enough trauma to last a lifetime.

I haven't written anything since. It would feel wrong.

I shut my mom's poetry journal and quickly stand from the bed, wincing at the burning pain on the skin of my leg, and get ready for school.