A colleague I admire -- for his wit, his willingness to go to the mat for his students -- asked me if I have the same passion as I did last year.
He means: a personal passion to create conversations on campus about poetry and writing. A personal passion to construct for my students a space where it's ok to be smart, to try new things, to venture and experiment.
But it's been such a hard summer. And I feel guilty saying that, but I'm still in the process of mourning. I feel bad saying that it's been hard, when it's not as hard on me as it could be. I'm still here, I'm still typing this out, hammering out a sentence in an air-conditioned room.
I conceived of this blog as a way to keep things handy -- thought I didn't want to think away, a kind of rogue diary that always spills what it contains.
And I've been dreading writing anything more here. As if by writing something that would physically go on top of what I've written about Liam, it would be like burying him with words. When what I wanted was to help him be always here, in this moment. I couldn't write if this was merely a graveyard.
But passion alters the form it finds.
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