Maybe we can make a metaphor

This week for the first time I'll be introducing students to Nicole Piasecki's remarkable essay "Maybe We Can Make a Circle," constructed as a letter to a beloved high school English teacher but with a twist I don't want to spoil. (Go read it first--it's worth it.)

I love so much about this essay--the way Piasecki evokes the conventions of the gratitude-for-an-influential-teacher letter while blasting them to pieces, the way she arouses strong emotions without swamping readers in gloom, the way she metes out essential information little by little and then all at once. But most of all I admire the gaps, the things she doesn't say or can't say, the questions she can't answer or maybe no one can answer. The heart of the essay beats in those gaps, in the unspeakable, incomprehensible, ineffable absence around which the essay circles.

I have not suffered the kinds of losses Nicole Piasecki describes, but I feel the anguish involved in tip-toeing around gaps. So much I can't write about right now, so many feelings I'm tamping down into a wad in the pit of my stomach, where they sit there and fester and wait to kick me awake in the middle of the night. 

And of course the worst part is that I can't even write about what I can't write about. I want to stay employed for another three semesters and I want to remain on speaking terms with friends and family and I want to continue to encourage students and colleagues to fight the good fight, but opening the door to the dungeon might loose the ravening beasts and endanger everything I care about. 

Over the decades my mother developed the habit of silence, biting her tongue and nodding in agreement until she lost the ability to speak for herself. She lived out the dictum don't rock the boat until the boat became stranded in a becalmed sea with no hope of ever reaching land.

(Why am I always transforming pain into metaphors? It's impossible to say just what I mean! And yes, I'm teaching Prufrock today, a poem more relevant with each passing year.)

One thing I'm certain of: it's impossible to eat the peach while biting my tongue. And yet here I am, dancing delicately around the gaps and wondering why I'm so darned hungry.