Kinetic

A poem by  Cortni Merritt

They ask: “Why can’t we have plain ‘history month’?”
I add: “And science month and art month and math and music months too?”
Better yet, why can’t education be focused on learning instead of teaching?

But this isn’t about students, it’s about children
It’s about facts and truth and double speak. It’s about
the weak and the vulnerable. (Let not suffer
the children. Their hearts are the art of nothingness,
silence, emptiness, and clean slates.)

It’s about the year I was born, and the year you were born.
He joked, “Remember when you were the future?”
But now. That future is slipping through
my fingers like white hairs that slip out of my crown. Some
cache in me cries, “but I am still the future.” I may still
have some future in me.

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Cortni Merritt is a mother and marketing copywriter living in central Florida. As the daughter of a Marine, she grew up living in Hawaii, Florida, Texas, and South Carolina, before graduating high school in Colorado and earning a Bachelor’s of Science in psychology from Colorado State University. Cortni earned an additional Bachelor’s degree in English literature at the University of Central Florida, where she met the father of her son. She completed her education at Florida State University with an M.A. in English literature, and now balances her life between full-time writing and being a mother. In addition to reading and writing, Cortni enjoys belly dance, photography, and trivia night at the bar