I am trying to understand my center.
              The dark sparkling glitter ball
that explodes during sex—how hard   
              it is to allow it. 
                                            I dreamt my partner of 34 years 
actually had two kinds of affairs. The one I knew
              about—the woman he is with now. Then
the sterile "technological" one that I had just learned
              about.
                                  My daughter was with me bearing witness.
                  
                                             The leaves were slicked and gorgeous. . . .
Or multicolored and crunching—
              on my daily walk down the road
to Wallingford Elementary. I
              wore a wool kilt closed with a gold safety pin, 
              carried a plaid 
lunch box. Inside a sandwich
                            wrapped in wax paper.

Always the bolus of mixed feelings.
My mother had crushed my spirit that day,
              I'm sure—
                            but I couldn't wait to get down the hill
and into school anyway. 
                                            All the worlds inside. 
Even with my shame-dreams 
              of standing on the landing in my nylon slip
I breathed the sharp frost, bore whatever self I had 
              down the hill 
and to the red door.

__

This piece came from a writing prompt in an online workshop I took (with Gabrielle Calvocaressi)—I was returning to teaching after a hiatus and wanted to watch a good teacher in action. I chose the option of writing about the first weather I remembered (I think). I took copious notes but then was instructed to narrow the whole poem down to a limited number of lines (half, I think, of what I came up with—but usually my poems are much longer). Meanwhile, concurrently, I wanted to write about sex—and I'm just not sure where that prism ball came from, but I liked that they were used for good luck. I am a Marie Kondo nightmare, but I like the idea of Feng Shui and a kind of "Good Luck" house.