structure(d)

by Una Zelić

English teachers are the worst kind.

They’re the kind that tell you there’s an underlying structure to it all.

Like a poem, life is rhythmic.

That’s what they want you to “analyze.”

They like stanzas, paragraphs, sentences, punctuation, because we can’t understand each

other without them.

Shakespearean sonnets.

They’re real pretty.

Real lyrical.

No matter how you read them, turn them, twist them, the words sound like music.

Fourteen lines.

Three quatrains followed by one couplet.

Each line in iambic pentameter, with ten syllables.

Hear the intricacy of those syllables.

But clap your hands to the rigid rhythm.

And don’t lose it, because no matter how the poetry moves, the structure is there.

So if you pay attention to your English teacher, they’re always somehow

Structured.

They like to do free writes every other Friday.

And they don’t let you escape to the bathroom in the first or last ten minutes of class.

Those ten are always crucial.

Always.

Without fail.

Some of us like to pretend we can draw lines between it all.

This is that.

And this is that.

Separate.

We flee sunsets for our covers and beds because of the shifting and sifting colors.

We build houses with clean white walls.

The crisp shadow where they meet white ceilings pushes the right buttons in our

neatly-folded brains.

So many of us are like our English teachers.

So many of us are alike because we like the similarities.

We like to look at another human and discern if whether what we see in them can be

seen in us.

We like to see the patterns.

We like to judge the hearts sitting in between the circles and squares.

We like to erase when we color outside the lines because extra colors or extra scribbles

can never be beautiful.

We like pencils with perfect tips and baby-pink erasers because we hate dark splotches

of pen bleeding through our papers or scratching over mistakes.

We like averages, formulas, points, square tiles, and evenly sliced cake.

But.

If you ask me, sunsets are a most perfect thing.

And sunsets have no structure.