I just found this writing exercise I did last spring, when I was trying out things from a craft book I’d ordered. You might remember the funny little mermaid thing I wrote. I didn’t post the following, which I must have written a week or so later, because at the time I was still less than three months away from quitting teaching and it seemed too strange, too selfish, too something to share. I also didn’t have the energy to change the names in it, but now I do. I share it not because it’s any good — it was just an exercise — but because reading it thrusts me straight back into what it felt like to be in the classroom in the morning, watching my kids blaze in already on fire and not having any idea how to douse the flames. Too, it makes me realize how totally off-kilter my perception was at the time, and for months afterwards — how honestly terrified I was of those girls, for no good reason. I wish I’d had a little more courage, and then I’d have seen them for who they really were.

I AM GARCIA MARQUEZ

Write a paragraph to a page (150-350 words) of narrative with no punctuation (and no paragraphs or other breaking devices).

slam and danae blows into the room like a small tornado not yet eight forty am and already she is burning at her momma who sizzled a curse off the edge of a frying pan this morning and burning at ms reyes who won’t let her into English class until she apologizes for calling her a stupid bitch which she is and burning at that pretty little girl on the bus who looks softer than rabbits she can suck her tits all of them can the whole world danae is apocalyptic or maybe she is just hysterical with the sheer effort of all those long minutes without racing or screaming or throwing herself into the nearest likely sulk slam and coming in she sucks up shamari and joelle so she can whirl them into the center of her storm they squint against the dust and laugh like babies being swooped in the air but there is a thinness to their laughter because they know what it is like to be dropped slam and hanging up her coat danae knocks kaylynn way out into a cornfield somewhere comes back to get her so she can fling her down again danae is small and very dense she cannot be subdued with reason or love it is useless to argue with her or ask her why she does these things for danae is a tornado and tornadoes do not know why they blow