Helpless, helpless & a word from Sarah

Perhaps the most interesting feeling I've experienced about my first novel hitting the stores is a sense of helplessness. I've done all I can, the publisher has done all it will, the booksellers have done whatever they're willing to do, and now it's up to readers to decide whether to pick up the darn thing. All I can do is focus on the next book. I understand that rationally, but it doesn't stop me from sometimes feeling irrational urges to somehow, some way find an angle that will boost sales.

Weird...and particularly bad for a control freak.

I'm already tired of my own insecurity, so anyone reading this must be bored to death with it. Consequently, let's leave me entirely and return to Sarah's poetry.

I enjoyed Sarah's last poem enough that I've asked her for more whenever she's willing. She contributed this one, which she wrote for an English assignment.

Enjoy.

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Lemonade

eleven years ago,
the two of us stood on my back porch
the sun bleaching us into cardboard cutouts from behind:
you with your lemonade hair
and me, a simple shadow.
the camera loved you then
our preschool's Marilyn Monroe
with the wind whipping your dress up,
squinting and smiling into the bright air.

the day before at the grocery
in the aisle between orange juice and eggs,
sci-fi dreams were being sold for a cent
cheap sunglasses that promised something more than shade.
we bought two pairs and you wore them
all the way home, looking like something from a story.
this new creature stepped on every sidewalk crack,
defying nursery rhyme laws we had so long obeyed.

I paled beside you then, as now
though I was the darker of the two of us.
you raise your arms to twirl and it's a standing ovation;
you jump and it's a choice when your feet hit the earth again.

that day, you didn't jump, but stepped
out onto dry noontime grass
and tilted your face toward the sun
like a daffodil kept too long inside.
I tried to see what you saw
through paper penny sunglasses,
but all I caught was my best friend,
falling in love with a plain southern sky.