I came across this poem I wrote as an example for my Creative Writing class two years ago. We had been studying poetry and were discussing haiku. Most students think haikus are easy. 5-7-5. Only 3 lines. They’re done. It’s over. I tried to explain that a well-written haiku is actually very difficult to achieve because you have to boil language down and pick just the right words to leave an impression. I say impression because you don’t want to give too much away. Just enough to evoke an image or a feeling which is often universal or transcendent. But, of course, I also remembered I was working with 13 year olds (many of whom had not chosen Creative Writing as their elective but had failed to fill out the request form for the elective they really wanted).
I did have one girl in the class that year, however, who made my efforts worth it. Just when I thought it was useless to try to get them to understand subtlety and meaning, she would wow me with some piece of brilliance. I’d love to share one of her poems or short stories with you but that would require her permission, and sadly as it often goes with great students, I only get to be in their life for a short while.
Anyways, their assignment was to write a series of three haikus which were interrelated, perhaps even telling a bit of a story, or carrying the same message or theme. Something I have always struggled with is letting go. Letting go of my past, of who I used to be, of how my relationships once were with the people I love(d). This was hard for me at 12 and it’s hard for me now at 29. At 12, I realized that I probably needed to move on from playing with my cloth dolls and imaginary friends and begin to enter the world of adolescence. At 29, I have to let go of much more difficult things. I have to let go of the kind of relationship I once had with my family. I’m not a kid. I’m an adult and soon I’ll be starting my own family with Ben. It’s not that I’m not ready for it. It’s not that I don’t look forward to it. It’s that I feel this enormous sense of loss when I think about my childhood or even my adolescence. When I imagine the backyard at our house in North Hollywood. Playing with my little sister outside. Watching episodes of Sherlock Holmes with my dad. Going to Starbucks weekly with my mom. It’s those little things that I miss and that I know I can’t ever get back. Sure, I can try to relive those moments, but even when I relive them, they won’t be how they were. I’m not 8 or 13, or 16. I’m 29. So this poem expresses that well of loss, but I think you’ll see that it also is hopeful for all that is to come.
Childhood Lost~
The Velveteen Rabbit
I knew my childhood
Was over, when I put my
Dolls into a box.
Velveteen rabbit,
I thought, as I sat and wept
the child that was.
All caterpillars
Must die, so that they may live
again. Butterfly.
To Contribute a Verse 
NIce Megan. I understand what you’re talking about completely. With age and experience one begins to accept the inevitability of change, but sometimes I mourn the loss of what was. I remember the day you moved away…I fell in the chair and wept like I did as child when left by my Mom at Kindergarten on the first day of school. Most recently I lost it when thanking my colleagues at Reseda High School at the retirement dinner. There is, however, a sweetness to the pain, when we go back to these places & times in our memories. There is a longing, a sadness in our hearts that mysteriously gives way to peace.