Spray Paint and Yolene

It's not easy to keep the spacing: walls aren't 12 x 12
And I don't have stencils the way we did in high school,
Letters big enough to see from the back of the stands
Before they burst.
There were stencils for those square sheets, all the ways
To remember that Corpus vacation, the band concert
And my own college graduation, partying with Delia.
The kids have those.
It doesn't matter if these letters are straight, if there
Are...what are they? Sticks? Tags? Fat letters,
Nicknames. I just want to say, I've bought the paint;
I am Still Yolene.

So there was a big, somewhat bitter, stir-crazy discussion at home about references and the fact I'd picked the name "Yavinia"...and, yes, it's just stream of consciousness and no, not everyone was addicted to tempera paint at various points in their childhood, or scrapbooking (a standard page is 12 x 12) and I settled on Yolene because that's probably her name anyway and it probably looks better on the wall and I was watching videos of brittle stars and people walking through their neighborhoods and dead malls while composing this because that's how I get through the day (and reading outside and playing a version of tennis ball soccer with our border collie that usually involves someone getting their toes sliced because Arthur doesn't really like to let the ball go unless he believes you're really going to walk away) *deep breath* and this should have been the poem because this is what stream-of-consciousness actually is, thank you very much; but it's not. 

This is the additional material that you should've (and probably have) definitely skipped. 

Hope you're doing well, that your writer brain is not coated in gauze and panic, and that we can all just pretend the preceding never happened. 

-- Chrissa