one month anniversary

Tomorrow: Songs of Innocence and Experience.

Tonight: A dinner out, to the place that seems so comfortable, where we sat with glossy menus, slick with condensation and conversation of apartments and houses. Talk of this weekend, of driving plans, of email trees and the moon's globe. Talk of internships at small poetry presses and how sometimes I think about what I'd do if I wasn't a teacher and how I'm not sure that would be any better or worse.

Finding ourselves a year old and thinking about what happened six years ago: Where we were. In the shower, he knocked, said a plane hit, and I thought it was nothing, just like the fire alarm in our apartment building a few days before, calling me out of the shower again, my hair crackling with soap, our cats mewling in their kennel. Leaning over the balcony, wondering if the fire trucks arrived yet, nothing--a false alarm. But this, six years ago--he was working downtown and called into work, I was attending a poetry workshop, my final portfolio course for undergraduate school. I spent the day on the futon, watching the news ticker, obsessed with small changes, and he played video games, obsessed with escaping.

What I tell my students: about how I read an article on The New York Times online about how some people are tired of the memorials. I tell them about the Amiri Baraka poem and watch them gasp and then I have them write about the responsibility (if there is any--what do you think?) of writers after events such as these: after Hurricane Katrina, Pearl Harbor, the sniper in the DC area, Virginia Tech, the 35W bridge collapse, the war in Iraq. I'm very interested to hear their responses; I'm very afraid of their responses; I'm very excited to read their responses.

But, for now, I have to think of how I will use my forty six minutes with Blake--this, from someone anxious to teach AP Literature, and now is faced with a course that is essentially discussion and lecture driven--which bits to keep, to leave out, to find them interested?

Happy one month to me and him. We are counting again (though we still tout the eight years; after all, this is truly a big accomplishment, I believe) and today, he brought me flowers.