The following blog is from my Haiku Room friend Jenny Douglas whom I met through AROHO. It is such a powerful series of haikus–and a great example of the healing powers of the Haiku Room:
http://lunalunamag.com/2014/06/11/let-tell-remember-mr-gordon/
Let Me Tell You What I Remember, Mr. Gordon:
A Haiku Memoir
by Jenny Douglas
My teacher chose me.
He, thirty-three; me, fourteen.
His beard, my young neck.
Twenty-eight letters
you wrote to me; to protect
you, I destroyed them.
I babysat for
your kids; you drove me home, turned
off the car, waited.
A box, your thumb, words:
“Here’s something I made for you.”
Puka shell choker.
I never wore it.
Classmates would inquire.
You were mystified.
“Best Body,” you wrote
on the blackboard, then my name.
My eighth grade name.
“Let’s meet this weekend,”
you suggested one Friday.
Flattered and panicked.
I spent Saturday
terrified you’d call and my
mother would answer.
Oh, to be needed!
As you—a grown man—seemed to
need me. (So I went.)
Spaghetti boundaries.
Other girls would have said “no.”
But you could push mine.
I did tell someone:
my English teacher, she was
only twenty-four.
“I think you’re being used,”
she said; a foreign language.
So the days went on.
This under your breath:
“You’re stabbing me in the heart.”
Outside study hall.
After school each day
I’d weep alone, then pinch my
cheeks and cry, “Hi, Mom!”
I ripped your letters
up, and threw them out onto the
Shuto Expressway.
My friend remembers,
“Your hair fell out in 8th grade.”
I forgot that part.
Telling you his name
still feels like a betrayal
after all these years.
My child died and I
met my woman years before
her time. I liked her.
Would you judge me if
I told you I loved him? I
Miss the me he saw.
Years later, I asked
my teacher, “Why?” He said it
was for my own good.
This I can now say
(after all these years):
“I am innocent.”
The cave calls to me
airless and dark. Here is where
I will learn to breathe.
A haiku memoir? Brilliant! Love the extended structure.