Free Write #1 ... Malapropism is What Adults Do

Aren't children clever? Soon - how soon? Already, they invent it. A way to cut through adults' weedy words. A way to grasp what they want. A way adults can grasp how much they mean it. Literary geniuses. My Hannah sits on her heels. Her strap-on shoes have fallen off four times. This bus that's coming won't let us pack our lives aboard. Just this much; it's so hard to explain. Just this much of you for the fare. This doll can go, this doll cannot. Pick your favorite. They're both my favorite. Again, how clever! If Shakespeare invented words, my daughter's Shakespearean. Is it words she invents or perceptions. Are words perceptions or translations? My thesaurus is not packed. Of my passport and paperclipped money, it is not my favorite. I love to hear my daughter interpret words she doesn't know. A thesaurus is a dinosaur. An oxymoron is a dumb cow. I give her a new word: Irony. She chews the word with her Now and Later, not liking the way turns the watermelon flavor tinny. Something that tastes like metal, she says. Irony, I turned my last English paper in yesterday. All that work and I won't know my grade. All those words I wove. I won't know if they were right. Not Hannah, because that's a child's superpower. The bus is chugging down the street. No, Hannah, sees the mortality of words. Even the paperthin can be split. The note we left on the Women's Mission door: "He will come. We won't be here." Adults reuse words like hard gum under the bus stop bench, chewing and chewing what saliva gradually won't loosen, because they can't find the right ones. But to children, everything is malleable, because reality has yet to pinned down by letters or sounds.

Answers for Are Muffin Tops Collapsible?

Busy!

A cappella Zoo began accepting submissions today and I've been reading and reviewing ever since my David went home.

New discovery: I love being an editor! It's what I want as my career. Throughout high school and college I thought: I'll teach creative writing or I'll be a librarian. Editor was a fallback. Not anymore.

In a different part of the forest, Pif Magazine has published my story "Answers for Are Muffin Tops Collapsible?"!