If I Was a Poet, I'd Kidnap You

Apologies for the hyperbole, but I did go to Catholic school

title inspired by

I discovered my buried writing from three years ago…. Things can only go up from here.

Found on Pinterest

2022 - I hated high school so much. But, I want to go back so badly. 

I can’t remember the last time I was this nostalgic. I just read this book – Lily King’s “The English Teacher” – and I cannot stop thinking about high school and how I desperately wish I had the chance to do it over again. Here are some things I miss. 

1. Cold, wet grass. Getting to school at 6:45am and being the only person there besides the cleaning staff. I can map the route to school in my head – taking the highway or the streets, both are ingrained in my body. I know exactly how it feels to be the first person to pull into the Senior parking lot and linger in my brother’s car until the leather is so stiff I have to get out — it was the first time I realized leather was unforgiving. I haven’t sat in that car in two years. I wonder if it smells the same. 

2. Being the only person in the third floor bathroom. I dreaded the walk to the third floor. I could physically feel my body weaken with every step, but I really loved going to the bathroom in the middle of class and being the only person walking down the hallway.  I used to be terrified of the bathroom up there. There were rumors that the boarding school students would end their lives by jumping out the window, leaving their souls stuck in the stalls. I always tried to rush, for fear that something would haunt me. That I’d see weird, foreign, ghost shoes waiting outside the stall. I never did, though. It was always just me. Right now, I would do anything to be the only person in that bathroom. To remind myself that I cannot be in there too long or my teacher would get suspicious, or someone else would walk in and ruin the whole moment. I miss how dangerous it felt to contemplate going outside and skipping class. I could imagine what it would be like to walk around an empty campus, knowing that my peers were sitting through Physics or English lessons, counting down the minutes until they could indulge in freedom like I was. But I would never actually do it. I wish I had, though. If I did it now, the stakes would not be as high. There would be no bark and no bite. 

3. I should’ve opened my eyes more during Mass. I should have taken that opportunity to look at my classmates when they thought everyone else had their eyes closed. I should’ve grounded myself in my body, thought hard about how it felt to sit next to someone whose parents’ names I didn't even know. How could you pray with someone and not even know their parents’ names? My Junior year I had this professor who would make us pray in a small chapel. At the time, I found it odd – thought to myself is this really necessary? Now, I would give anything to sit in that chapel with my fifteen peers and revel in the fact that we were all sitting there at 7:50am waiting to pray in Italian. I should have looked at the stained glass. Should have committed it to memory. I was too busy thinking about college. How much gas was in my car and whether or not my aunt would ask me to take her grocery shopping as soon as I walked through the front door, even though my brother had been home all day. What I should have done – and what I wish I could do now – is open my eyes, look at my classmates and their clasped hands, and begged God for a clarity that would have let me realize that the moment I hated so badly when I was 17 was the only thing keeping me sane now, at 21. 

From 2022 - written throughout the year at random moments

1. The hours minutes between 5:44pm-7:22pm feel heavenly in Barbados 

2. Writing someone’s name is practically a declaration of love. 

3. I saw three little boys waiting with one another for the school bus. I wonder how long they’ll be friends for.

4. I saw three grown men taking a smoke break outside the construction site. I wonder if they were those same little boys. 

5. I wonder what it would feel like to live in the countryside. To sleep with the windows open and feel lace curtains tickle me in my sleep. To have a warm, loving body beside me. To hear the crickets chirp and wonder if they also felt this good. 

6. I met the love of my life on the train yesterday. I don’t know his name. We didn’t even say “hello,” but I saw that he wrote in a paperback book and dog-eared his pages and that was enough for me. I wanted to ask if he liked the book, if he thought certain characters were as insufferable as I found them, if he always carried a book with him. I did not ask any of these things. Instead I made up a story— he had a girlfriend he was madly devoted to and me speaking to him would be futile. We got off at the same stop and walked the same way for a couple blocks. I imagined feeling his eyes on my back (they probably were not). I imagined him walking faster to catch up with me (he did not). Obviously, he was not the love of my life. But, it was nice to think so for the stops between Hoyt-Schermerhorn and West 4th. 

7. I had an odd daydream the other day. I was in the car, driving upstate, and saw an abandoned church in the middle of the woods. I liked the way the light was cutting through the blown out windows. It felt sacred and cinematic. I could imagine what it would have looked like with stained glass windows, and a choir, and cars lined up outside. Immediately I think about sex, and what it would be like to be taken to that abandoned church and cross the real threshold between girlhood and womanhood. In my imagination a couple things were different – the church was still in use, but emptied for the day, and it was in the South – hot and muggy summer weather. I imagine what it would be like to feel the eyes of God while a hand slides up your skirt, to feel shamed by that. I also imagine what it would be like to pray for the pleasure to never end. To apologize to God while also giving thanks that humans could experience something so holy.

8. Jacaranda Woman - I have dreams of being a woman with a long braid who lives in her own home in the countryside. Although local farmers and market men and church ladies wonder about my solitude, nobody bothers me - I come and go as I please and I fall asleep in the sticky heat of the country with a fan lazily whirring and my bedroom window open - I want to be a woman who reminds you of a jacaranda. I want to use men for my pleasure and abandon them once they have fallen in love with me. That’s when I will know it’s time for them to go.

____________________________________________________________________________

I feel a slight bit of pride. This feeling, pride, is new to me. I used to think it was something all-encompassing which radiates, but it’s really more like a little flame I’m holding in my hands and my heart. It’s all mine. I think what I wrote back then was quite good and I would probably write some of it right now, just differently. I’m in a weird spot where I am thinking about my future, but realizing I can only do that by calling into direct conversation the past. It feels weird. I am kind of into it, though. I’m enjoying these shorter form posts and will keep going through my old journals and bundling up all these versions of myself. What a joy it is to realize I have been the same person all along!

Lots of love,

Jasmine <3

—

yoooooo i drafted this so long ago it’s now june 9th and im saying yolo and posting this!! woo!!