Why am I the Lucky One?

(I made the mistake of going to bed whining about things that in perspective were really dumb and trivial. And this was my dream.)

Why am I the Lucky One?

I dreamed I walked a road with another girl. She wore black. I wore green.

We talked and laughed until our road forked.

I got into my car and drove 12 hours to college,

She was shoved into a train and driven 96 hours to a camp,

I fumed and fussed at bad drivers and broken traffic lights,

She was licking her cracked lips and holding a broken arm, 

I told my Dad I was too tired to stay up and tell him about my trip,

She was told she would never see her Dad again.

I awoke the next morning to grumpily snooze a loud alarm,

She was woken by a rifle shot and an angry curse,

I opened my cupboard and couldn’t decide between cereals,

She was marched down a line to get a boiled turnip,

I worried about an unwritten essay and 70 pages of reading,

She was given a shovel to dig graves,

I complained about my boss and a few extra hours to work,  

She was afraid to slow down or her boss would shoot her brother,

At the day’s end,

I went home, wondering if my roommate's boyfriend would be over again,

She was marched to her bed, wondering if her roommate was alive,

I wondered why the radio station wouldn’t play anything good,

She was wishing she could hear music again,
I worry about impressing my date this weekend,
She was wishing the boy she liked were alive, 

I wished I weren’t out of eggs to make what I wanted,

She was handed one choice of old bread,

I forced my tired eyes to go read scriptures with a full light,

She was straining in the dark to read the one page of print she owned,

I went to bed with a roommate to wish good dreams,

She was holding a child coughing blood and praying he wouldn’t wake,

The next morning,

I put on my warm coat and grumbled about slogging in snow to school,

She was clutching at her thin shirt and watched her breath freeze,

I felt beaten by my professors’ criticism,

She was beaten to blood by her guards,

I closed my eyes and wished I weren’t at school,

She closed her eyes and wished she were in heaven.

I got into my shower and felt warm water, 

She was put into a shower and felt warm gas.

I left my shower.

She was carried from hers.

Two girls, one in black, one in green.
Both born with hopes and dreams.  
Both born under stars, hers a yellow pinned to her chest, mine on a flag, 

I am not any better than her - why am I the lucky one? 

The Potato Peeler

(Angela, this is for you. Some day I might finish it, but I wrote this much to make you feel better about peeling a ton of peaches.)

The Potato Peeler

I peel potatoes. Lots of potatoes. Why? Because I have a lot of brothers. Too many to count. Mom says there are seven, but I guess about a hundred. And they eat a lot of potatoes. I peel piles and piles and piles and piles and piles of potatoes. It gets pretty boring. But they keep eating piles and piles and piles and piles of potatoes. I don’t understand why that doesn’t get boring. But they never seem tired of it.

I get tired of peeling potatoes, so I don’t see how this is fair.

I like playing with potato peels though – drawing and arranging them into patterns and stories. No one ever wants the peels, just the potatoes. But I do. I have a big pile of potatoe peels in the backyard inside the hollow maple tree. I’m a very little girl, so I curl up just inside it really nice, although I always rip my dress on a root that sticks out by the door. Mom is really tired of sewing it shut, so she makes me do it now.

Inside I have lots and lots of kinds of potato peels. Some are squares and some are circles. Some are spirals and some are short pieces. When I peel potatos, I try to make a game and see how long I can make a peel. Once I even got the whole potato in one peel.

I also made a peel once that looks very like the head of my brother Frederick. I don’t have that one anymore though, because I showed it to Frederick and told him, and he got mad because he said his nose isn’t that big. So he ripped it up. Which made me mad, because it was a really cool peel.

One day, I am going to be famous, because I am going to take all my potato peel art and show it to everyone. And they won’t laugh at me.

Inside my tree hollow, I line everything up on the shelves. One by one I line them up, by kind and by size. When I want to make something, I draw a circle on the floor and build a world. It works well. There are some peels that make good people. And some peels that just make good walls or houses. I make the worlds I read about. They have princes and princesses and knights and horses and lots and lots of pretty things and no one eats any potatoes. I think it sounds like a really good place to be.

Sometimes my stories get really, really good, and I pick the pieces up really carefully and glue them onto paper from my notebook. I even painted some. And I put them in a pile in the corner in a plastic. There isn’ really a good way to hang them from a dirt wall in a tree. Besides, sometimes it gets muddy when it rains and then the paper crumbles up and makes a mess.

I don’t tell my brothers about the potato peel tree, because I don’t want them to laugh at me or rip it up. And they would probably do both.

Every day all my brothers leave with my Dad and are gone for hours. They come back pretty dirty, and they say I’m lucky to stay with Mom all day. I don’t really think so, because when I’m not peeling potatoes I’m usually washing the clothes they keep getting dirty every day. I told Mom there was no point in washing them when they come back just as dirty, but she said that wasn’t the point. I don’t know what the point is then.

Mom is short, thin, and gets mad pretty easy. Her right eye twitches a lot, and she says it’s a nervous habit. I asked why and she told me to stop asking questions. I don’t know why she is always nervous or what a habit is.

Once a week when Dad and the boys come home they bring a couple more big bags of potatoes. They bring other stuff to sometimes, but mostly I just remember the big bags of potatoes. I wish they would go away and never come back. I hate potatoes.