My heart has been apple-blossom bursting right along with all the rest of the spring flowers this month.
Spring is always a signifier of goodness barreling down a dirt road to bowl me over with warm breeze happiness & a sunshiney temperament. This spring though, the goodness has been overwhelming. Everyone remarked on what a long winter it had been & how ready they were for spring. I always rabbit-hole into myself during the winter & this one was no different (but tempered by a beautiful close-knit group of friends & professors, good food, & poems). Still & all: warm temperatures & hints of sun were a blessing to breathe in.
I feel like I’ve just been spinning in a dizzyingly vibrant & merry vortex, stretching out my hands to collapse all the good into myself–saving up for winter months ahead. I will be in NYC this summer (follow my NYC blog to keep up-to-date on adventures!) interning at a literary agency, something that felt planets away last summer. Last July I informed my parents that this was my last summer home & proceeded to pack the entirety of my high school room up & tetris it into my mom’s art studio. I reflected on how easy it was to consolidate a life into cardboard & plastic & left for junior year empty-shouldered & terrifyingly free. I had, of course, no idea how I was going to manage not coming home next summer. I was thinking loosely about moving to NYC but had no idea how finances would work out. But here’s the funny twists of the universe: it worked. One of my friends wrote to me this summer about employing the idea of “thoughtful recklessness,” quoting something one of her professors had said. There are moments when it is impossible to do anything but shut your eyes & leap, praying that someone or something will catch you, that the universe has decided to safety-net you. I have noticed a strange & beautiful pattern in my life: for all my worrying & nail-biting & journal angsting & midnight sobbing that precedes an act of thoughtful recklessness, things work out.
Paying for senior year was like a screw turning at a bad angle in the back of my mind, especially upon finding out that I wasn’t going to get a college-wide scholarship from the Geneseo Foundation for next year–money is tight everywhere. I was blowing my savings on this city summer & already trying to put a good spin on finances for my mom, just to avoid tongue-clicking & worried eyes about going deeper into college debt. But then: a scholarship from the English department for a substantial amount, because God bless my mentor, who had taken time out of her crampacked schedule to nominate me, knowing my financial difficulties. I think I teared up when I got that email, pressed my hands to my mouth in overwhelmed gratitude & stared in shock. It’s not covering everything, but it’s helping so much. Every little bit helps.
Frantic poem submissions in mid-March flowered open to inform me in May that all three of my poems had been accepted for next March’s issue of The Susquehanna Review, an international undergraduate literary magazine. All three. It was another hands-to-mouth moment & feeling like a million balloons were swelling inside me.
And then, like a final flourish on a four-tiered wedding cake: a heart-soaring boy dropped into my life by casually dropping into a seat across from me at a Starbucks table. A surprise so strange & lovely I still don’t quite believe I get to call him every night & share a part of his intricate & new world.
It’s been a spring of surprises & feeling lucky-penny blessed. I described junior year as a wildfire: chaotic, warm, encouraging new growth, something overwhelming & beautiful. I am thrill-scared, like I’m waiting at the top of a rollercoaster to plummet into the new things waiting, thinking about rolling more of my life into suitcases & wandering down city streets with wide eyes & open hands. Thinking also about the people I have yet to meet–invitations into complex & thrumming life stories, paths winding together for awhile–the words waiting to be discovered in sidewalk cracks, subway performers, a summer downpour, the swelter of summer heat & a six-story walk-up apartment, in getting lost & becoming found. I envision myself at this crossroads, touching hands with a multitude of people & trying to choose which path to walk.
Spreading my fingers wide today to send my love to everyone who holds a piece of my heart in their hands. I couldn’t do any of this without you.
The Wanderer 