Summer 2012

Commissioned for New Haven Loves the Arts, a Valentine's Day 2015 tribute to the arts and humanities in New Haven, CT

It’s the summer before junior year
Nineteen year-old me enters the living room
Says, “Mom, Dad, I have something to tell you:
I want to major in English”
My parents sigh in unison as if something has shattered
Their faces dropping as if they were following the descent of a vase
A ceramic container of their hopes and dreams
Carefully watered and weeded for twenty hopeful years
On the brink of blooming
Now broken into beautiful, devastating pieces
What I should have said was
“Mom, Dad, I want to turn dreams into fact via page
Write words that sound like rhythms and songs that sound like stories
Capture the rough sweet grit of an early morning in an unfamiliar city
Or meditate in verses on the warm buzz of a late night with best friends
See, I want to study soft science
Because the world is vast, and chemistry and engineering
They are brimming with that vastness
I want to study the details
Illuminate the gray areas
Make extensive metaphors trying to encapsulate the complexity of the humanities
And I’m sorry that you were holding your breath
Waiting for me to walk a pre-planted path from college to career but
I’d rather live in the world of Audre Lorde and Wordsworth and Mondrian and Chimamanda
A world I can create as I go along”