The day before my family flew home after a summer of adventures, we visited the Boston Science Museum, where we learned about living in space, how chicks hatch, why calories are burned the way they are, and dozens of other wonders. We played with a plastic model of the human body that worked like a jigsaw puzzle of organs. Lucy, a museum educator, spoke with us about where the liver goes and how it works, and then she asked my kids how big they thought their hearts were. They made a few guesses, and she made a fist and asked them to do the same. She said, “That’s how big.” Then she gave my daughter homework: to look in the mirror that night and remember that there has never been another person exactly like her, and there never will be. “You are special,” she said. “One of a kind.”
The Stranger: Lucy
The Word: Happy
The poem I wrote:
In a picture I keep forever tucked behind my eyelids
she leaps high and happy with her doll in the crook
of one arm. She smiles like the world will give her gifts
forever. Says: I know, baby, it’s a long time ‘til Christmas. She wraps butterfly wings around her branchy arms, says, I was a caterpillar once
but that was a long time ago.
The Challenge: Do you have a poem in you on this word? Write one here.