Paper Plate Poetry

My dad loves to tell the story about a poem I wrote when I was little (guessing around 4-6, but can't for the life of me remember). We were visiting Grandma Norma and Papa Milton at their apartment on 10 Wedgewood Drive (I have vivid childhood memories at this apartment). I had a whole bunch of paper plates and was writing and drawing on them. So here's the poem my dad always mentions...pretty much every time I talk to him...kind of our thing...

"Love is like a dream sitting in your heart"

The poem was nothing profound...I guess just memorable. I was sitting on the floor in-between the dining room and the living room...that much I remember. My dad treated it like it was the best thing he ever read. Daddy's are supposed to do that, you know... 

Comforting thought, dreams residing in your heart. I haven't always made room in the past. It's been cluttered with could have beens and what was', cluttered with mistakes and fears of being vulnerable (or too vulnerable).

So I've waded through them and these are the dreams that remain in my heart: 

That first kiss, sitting on my living room floor.. Kurt, my first boyfriend. June 15th, 1984...

The candid photo I took of my friend Jim at Soda Dam when we were more than just friends (back to just friends now, lifelong friends)...

When Special B and I first saw each other and then shook hands good-bye in the parking lot later that night...neither wanting to leave...Dancing in our room at Sarabande, the possibilities of our life spinning in front of us, the card he gave me that weekend. I carried it in my purse for months...The hug, that hug that I wanted so badly to be forever...the dream last year when I realized he couldn't hug me that way again...

Rusty at my door with his glue gun, ready to glue 120 scarecrow faces onto paper for Peanut's class project...and his face when he realized he'd be staying that night...the feeling I had, the moment I realized it was okay to love again.

These dreams have taken up permanent residency, they get to stay...the wonderful and the painfully sad sharing the same space...a variety of paper plates stacked carefully together as if they were fine china...to be used only during special occasions.

Hardly poetic, I realize, but not bad for paper plate poetry.