During high school, you filled my emptiness.
You aroused me with "Yellow Daffodils" and the
"Ode on a Grecian Urn."
To the beat of bongo drums, Sidney Poitier recited the life in Plato's Cave,
as I felt my first kiss from a boy in your classroom.
On stage, actors lived the Bradbury tales on the Illustrated Man.
After you played Hamlet, I brushed your arm accidentally and
was amazed by the heat of your skin.
You said "Observe, observe the life around you.
Keep a journal, and write of the specialness of each day,
only as you see with your eyes."
I did not write in journals then, but I write everyday now.
I have forgotten what I wrote on assigned essays.
But yes, I remember how you read my words to the class, as tenderly
as the words of Dylan Thomas.
I wondered then, are my thoughts and words just as profound?
For this wonder, I write wishing you were reading my words
to me, again.
Copyright 2005 by Portia Choi. All rights reserved.