Tessa's Worldview Poem

 Directions

I was born in all directions.

Child of the South, West North Carolina on the East Coast

And while I toast my mother's good mothering and my father's attempts

I wept

She kept our poverty from me, Still, I could see the discrepancies between them.

I was a snowglobe when he left me the first time

I was pretty on the inside, transparent on the out

Shake me and who I've become is blanketed in white

Touch me and smudges will keep me up at night

I was dancing in hydrogen when he left me for the first time.

My flame nearly invisible, leading people to touch me and burn their fingertips

by accident

Life was simpler then and the comprehension of little things was the only thing I comprehended

Mama was mended by the time my curves rolled around. 

I was born in all directions 

Like a compass with four arrows, my path felt too narrow for getting there.

Getting where this fertile direction could plant itself

I was twelve, when I mapped my way away from there. 

With a backpack and a scholarship, I slipped into three years of heaven. 

A farm school of free-spirited weirdos, grass beneath our toes, we were family. 

I barely saw my family, those years. 

But what I learned there was invaluable

I was valuable, they told me, I mattered. 

Life breathed into Mom those years, compass facing fears and dissolving

She'd found her calling: psychoanalysis.

And a read-headed therapist named Peter.

He's been my teacher, for many things.

I was withering in public school.

Never belonging, longing for connection, shared direction...

My compass leading me to bathroom stalls at lunchtime, texting my mom:

I'm not fine, I'm not fine, I'm frozen.

Smudged and shaken. 

If my best friend were here, be not mistaken, I'd be killing it here!

But I am alone. 

So it's time to go again, dust off the backpack, teach myself Italian

A 16 I discarded America

Realized that skies are bluer overseas

A land foreign to me, more interesting

I was more interesting:

The foreigner.

I grew up in all directions. 

From forest to Florence, glass walls couldn't keep me and no one could leave me

if I left first.

And I always left first. 

A move to the sea, Barcelona.

Driven to drive something bigger than me, something global

I became hopeful.

International degree, I set free inhibition

Made it my mission

To learn and to listen, collecting direction

North, East, West, South

To learn how to help put food in the mouths of people who suffer

Those who are othered

People whose lives are displaced for another. 

Can we face conflict without killing each other?

I care too much. Which is hard to do

when you're 21, broke, Coke & Malibu

Scheming all the things I planned to do in the future

That is my nature. 

A poignant summer in Ukraine

A pro-EU integration campaign

The local kids they call my name 

"Tessa, will you be back in the summer again?"

I am made of all direcions

Especially inwards

My heart touched so

easily by the hearts of others

Like my mother, a helper, a lover

We will always share that with each other.

I stand here now and I vow to keep caring

Commit to a life of

bearing witness, of 

repairing compasses

of those who have been stepped on.

We all deserve direction.