Oh my God, you may be thinking.  Three posts in a week?  What is going on?  Is this some sign of the apocalypse?  Will there be a fourth post, and will that fourth post be the fourth horseman?  Fear not, Gentle Readers.  Though this is 2012 and the Terrible Robot Apocalypse is surely soon to be upon us, that isn’t the reason for this post.  There is, in fact, a much better reason: my students.

Listen, there’s really nothing a professor could ever hope for more than to have a handful of engaged, caring, dedicated, risk-taking students.  I feel like I’ve absolutely hit the jackpot when it comes to my creative writing students, everywhere I’ve taught.  I have more than a handful: I have whole roomfuls.  Every day, I thank and thank and thank all my stars for being so lucky.

Take, for example, my Advanced Creative Nonfiction class this semester, who bowl me over every day with their talent, their drive, their dedication, their taste in fabulous shoes, their all-around awesomeness.  They’re doing a lot for me this semester, from working on blogs to ceaselessly reading to writing essays with awe-inspiring bravery.  Last week, we discussed Sandra Beasley’s Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl, and the group in charge of the discussion came up with a writing prompt I love so much I’m going to borrow it in the future.  The prompt comes from a part in the book where Beasley writes about those “I Am Joe’s [Insert Body Part]” articles, how she learned about the body from them.  For the exercise, the group asked us to write from the point of view of a body part in a state of injury.  I chose my sciatic leg, and the exercise knocked me off my feet.*  Through it, I was able to finally talk about what it’s like to live with a leg that sometimes just decides it doesn’t feel like walking right now, thank you very much, and so I’m thankful to my students for that.  Some of them are posting their exercises on their blogs, so I’m posting mine here in solidarity with them.

Thank you, creative writing students of mine — all of you, past, present, and future — for teaching me so much.

I Am Emma’s Leg

Sometimes I am full of fire.  Sometimes I am full of nothing.  I am pins that make themselves needles and needles that make themselves pins.  I am a song and throb into morning too early to be called morning, too late to be called night.  I am bone and blood and tissue.  I am a system which has broken down.  Some morning she will say to my knee, move, and my knee will say back still. Or there will be only motion.  She will wake in the floor in sheets swaddled.  She will wake sockless, sheets kicked off.  She will wake legless or with the feeling of being legless.  She will not know the difference.  I will move and she will wonder who moved me.  She will wonder will she move herself at all.  She will trick her body into balance with a cane.  I will live within her pants, within her shoes, not feeling their fabric or leather.  Every toe will speak: I hit the sidewalk, I hit the tile, I take wrongly every step she can force me to take.

*PUN SO INTENDED.