I am the big shadow on the trampoline tonight. I crawl over the rail and rusty springs, and lay down with my wet hair smoothed behind me.
 Lying next to these leaves is the closest thing to company that I'll find at two in the morning, unless that neighbor boy is still on his front porch. I imagine his cigarette moving down those neighbor-steps, and invading my front yard.

 He will say, "Hello, little lady. Don't let me startle you". 

"I don't mean to be forward, ma'am, and I know we haven't met yet, but I wanted to know if I could do a little star-gazing with you".

My hair is still wet, and little droplets run around the trampoline as I roll over.
The neighbor boy is barefoot. He climbs over the tattle-taling springs respectfully, and lays down on the leaves that have fallen on my trampoline. Hands behind his head, he points his face to the summer sky, but then back to me.
"I asked your daddy about you after mowing yesterday", he says. I want to ask him if there was jealousy on daddys' face, but he answers: " he's a proud father".
"I'm Sarah Elizabeth", I tell him, but keep looking at the stars.
He understands that I'm not interested in a conversation. I lay my hand out beside me, like an invitation, and he rubs my palm between his thumbs, and holds my hand up to the darkness.
"You know, you wouldn't feel so alone, if your hand wasn't so tiny against that big sky, little one". I wonder if he's seen me do that on my own.
"You enjoy your loneliness too much, Sarah Elizabeth".
It's daddy. He can't climb over the rail, but he knows that my tears are rolling around the trampoline, along with water from my dripping hair.
"I can't help it, daddy", I say.
Daddy reaches across the springs and holds my hand.
Like the wisest of men, daddy knows I'm not interested in a conversation.
"Come inside soon, Sugar", he says. "I miss you".
That cigarette light is as far away as the stars above my head.

the poem combining the positive and negative images

My sunshine-sparkle sandbox day
Shone day-white through the blinds
That morning "God" , I
said "I'm perfect"
In the ice-cream line.

I've come the closest to that day
With you, my baby blue
But sandbox days and sandbox play
Is through like we are through.

These days start dark, mid-afternoon
I steal a desk beside you
And god your
Face just feeds me hate,
A spiteful stoic line.

I wasn't red-bright shoes to you,
My lovely blue-cloud sky
But I can claim my perfect day
You only watch me cry.

parallels between positve/negative images

1. Both situations were unnatural. Perfection-how strange!Spite from a friend-unreal!

2. I maintain subconcious disbelief in both images. I always will wonder if I dreamed that perfect day. I will never accept that my friend truly rejected the person that I revealed to him.

3.Both images are picture-exact. I can see the sun shining through the ragged blinds onto my dalmatian blanket. I see the boy sitting, elbows to desk-top, with his mouth a "stoic line of revenge", and his eyes trained to anywhere but me.

4. In both situations, I responded defiantly. I challenged my friends' spite by sliding into the desk next to him every day. I told God that I was perfect on the sunny day: knowing very well that I was not.

5. Both images are strange, due to prior experience.
It didnt take a rainy day to know that the "perfect day" from my childhood was special. Yet I remember that day even now, because  I have never had another day like it. My silent friend sticks in my memory, because there were days when we were anything but silent spiteful students.

positive image

And I opened my eyes, and the sunniest day I ever lived in was shining through the blinds.  I was ready to jump up and dress myself: I must have put on my favorite pair of shoes.I didn't cry at all that day. I was obedient and smiling all day.
And I don't remember much about my brothers, but I can bet that I was included in all the running around that went on that day.
We were so poor in those apartments. But on that day, when the ice-cream truck came by, moma bought me a tweety-bird pop, complete with her orange marshmallow beak.  I can remember laughing in the brightness of everything, and telling God that I was perfect that day.
I know I did not dream it - I was too young to imagine all that perfection by myself. What a sunny sandbox day!
It didn't take a rainy morning to remember that special day in heaven. I knew the perfect day when I was living it, and I long for heaven now, because I saw what it was like.

negative image

I hate you for breaking your promises, boy. I thought that friends knew better than that. You were no friend to me; you were worse. You chose to love me, to know me, and to adore the things about myself that only we saw.
I would rather not talk about my part in this, because now, all I can think about is English class. I kept stubbornly sitting across from you, trying to prove to myself that in one small way, our relationship had not changed. But you, in your spite, couldn't even let me hold on to that, dear one.
I don't hate you: I hate the silence that we observed.I hate that I stared at you, just to see if you would glance at me a time or two. I wanted to know that you missed me.
If you glanced, I never saw it. So now, there is one final picture of you left in my head. Stare at your desk, boy, determined to hate me, with your mouth set in a stoic line of spite.
Are you afraid? Were you unnerved like I was? I am afraid now, because I know that my very best, my very soul, can be forgotten. Before now, I did not know that I could be hated.

Today, walking to class, I "woke up" spelling two words out loud, to a rythmn, for no particular reason at all.
I have no idea how those words got in my head, either. They certainly weren't anything special, because I pulled them out of thin air.
But now that I try to recreate the rythmn,I cant think of the words that I was spelling.
I am also having trouble thinking of words that I can throw around like that.
They are a little hard to find.
I have just tried doing this with about twenty words, and I am not satisfied yet.
All the words I have tried so far are:
a. too long to have a simple rythmn
b. too similar in ending
c. not sing-song enough
d. too unlikely to have been pulled out of thin air
This is driving me crazy!
I am going to have to space out on purpose now, hoping that I "come to" sing-song-spelling two unlikely words.
Doesn't this just show the simplicity of "inspiration"? Doesn't it prove that most of the time, inspiration has nothing to do with me?
Rather, my rythmns and rhymes are the product of my wandering mind.
And sadly, if my pen and paper aren't handy, most of these are forgotten, too.
Of course, I always end up sharing my stories, my thoughts. But I wonder what I could have written today with those two words that I have forgotten.
I know that I won't ever know.
But from now on, if I catch myself spelling and rhyming on the way to dinner, I am tucking my rhymes into my pocket.

why you should read my journal

im not assured of very much
i know that i can say
"i know my thoughts"
are maybe yours?
is that too much to say?
and i dont know
too much about
you people from one look
but open books for anyone
all beg a closer look