She squeezes in next to me at lunch
this woman, almost graduated, MFA nearly done
manuscript ready, pitch pitched,
book unfurling on its own winged pages
“Your thesis,” she says, “what is it? What are your ideas?”
And she hunts me like a bulldog
ramming its head against my hand, but instead of “pet me” it’s
“Thesis thesis thesis. What are you doing? What are you thinking? It’s coming, next semester, on the other side of solstice, in the cold wet of January
what’ll it be, chickadee?”
She’s eating and haranguing, badgering, slurping up my noncommittal “I don’t knows” but not swallowing
And I DON’T know except to say that I want to tell the stories that aren’t getting told
I want to take what’s outside of me and bring it in
give the solstice birds room to roost and talk and tell
the stories they never dared
the things I have never said
together, maybe we can shoulder our grief
and figure out how to reframe the things we’ve lost
or reconcile that they were never ours to begin with.
I want to stretch the edges of my curiosity
though I hope they go on forever.
I want to tell the stories
that set my teeth on edge
and pull my tears from drought
I always want there to be something that I don’t know.
“Thesis” beats in my brain like the heart of a hungry hawk
I’m listening
She laughs, satisfied.
Blind inFlight 
Wow! I never found a comments link on your posts before. Apparently, that comes with the emails.
As for this piece, I loved the way the last line just comes out of nowhere and cinches the whole thing up.
Whoa, Lauren! I’m listening for what you will say. You’ve
whittled down to the bone of your voice and are on the edge of spilling secrets I want to know.