19 and no pithy rejoinder to it

So many of us are unfurling into this new warmer weather. True, today's taken a step backward. It's rainy and gray, and colder. The day has an edge that pulls us back, like a tide, toward winter.

But the trees are budding, and the flowering trees are unfolding their blossoms. Can I tell you just how tulip trees make me catch my breath? I almost want to clap my hands together when I see them, and squeal up on my toes, like a little girl again.

Sometimes I see people in tall rubber boots wandering campus through the puddles and I want a pair of my own, and I want to go puddle stomping and mud rumping (for lack of a real verb I have just made one up). I want my boots to be red or green and have little pigs or whales on them.  Does this mean that I'm immature? (But I AM immature. That's a given.)

I've been trying to walk around the building more to keep my blood flowing. All this sitting is making me tight and grumpy. My back's always just a twinge away from a real spasm. So I've been getting up and wandering through the 4th and 3rd floors. Next I'll head outside and down to the Campus Center and the river. I hope the campus dog, Abbey, is out and about when I do that. I love to see her black lab energy as she bounds after her balls, ignoring us.

Yes, spring has surely sprung, despite this regression today. I know it's here because it's getting harder and harder to get you young writers to turn your shit in. I'm going to have to show you that spring is a grand motivator, rather than a colossal procrastinator.

(I just heard Abbey barking!)

Today's poetry prompt I'm taking from Robert Wallace and Michelle Bouisseau, Writing Poems 5th edition, at random:

(p. 184) 1. Try writing a poem using one of the following as a speaker: a turtle turned on its back by kids; a major league outfielder who fears he'll be traded; a surgical nurse on the late shift; Marie Antoinette's wig maker; one of your ancestors; a dandelion; a shoplifter. What might you need to know or find out, or invent, in order to make the poem convincing and interesting? Or imagine another speaker who in some way will help you explore some part of yourself.

If I knew I'd have to explore some part of myself I wouldn't have opened this document. :P

*

Purple Passion

It's not that I need the nail polish.
Truth be told, I haven't any nails left.
I bite them, nibble them down
to the bloody quick.

In fact, I should really slip this
expensive lotion into my bag,
while the makeup register bitch
with the chapped lips
looks down at her accounting slips.

Purple passion --
that's the ticket.
A deft flick of the off-wrist
and the smooth jar's
in my palm like a cool
promise, like a secret
tucked behind my smiling lips.
Makeup bitch looks up
as I pat the passion
into my purse pocket.
She probably knows my game
but they don't pay her enough
to give a shit.

Is that it? She slides
the expensive lotion
across the electric eye.
Have a nice day, I say,
taking my change and
swinging the plastic bag
against my hip.

I'll walk to the apartment
in the humid rush hour
along busy streets
of single-minded cars,
and kids on bikes,
and dogs dragging their leashes,
and a few tired mothers
pushing dusty strollers
with fussing babies,
all the time purple passion
hidden inside its pleather pocket,
waiting to paint me wild.