"How are you today, ma'am?" I asked her, and she smiled up at me as only a graying, seventy-year-old lady can. "Just fine," came her reply, and so I started scanning her groceries. She only had a few, and I knew it wouldn't take me more than a minute. Then she would be gone, like all the others who had come before her.

Mr. Andrews holds his classes in a gym room of roughly forty feet by twenty. Upon entering, you would first notice a tall, wooden compartment standing by the doorway, with an assortment of sticks, bags, short swords, and shoes all shoved into these compartments, or arranged against the left wall with no amount of orderliness.

I went to the park today. The woods there remind me so much of where I used to live. Before my family moved to the city, we lived on a farm outside of town. It was about sixty acres, evenly split between woods and grassland. We'd moved there from Dallas nine years ago, when I was eight. I spent the next eight years of my life there. And then we moved.

I started writing poetry during my English class last year. It was actually the very first English class for me, since my mom had never really been strong in that area. I was in the tenth grade, and studying mathematics at the eleventh grade, but because of my weak background in grammar, my mom had enrolled me in a ninth grade class. Even so, I was nervous that first day.

Since I'm new to Apricot Pie, I thought I should introduce myself, briefly, to you all. My art will certainly do a better job at revealing my personality than I ever could, but I thought I might provide a little bit of the bigger picture.

Writing about yourself is akin to writing about the mysteries of the universe - we are our own greatest mystery. Hence, I have gathered the observations and descriptions of my inner circle of friends, and hopefully you will gain their insight into who I am, for I cannot in all honesty write about myself and hope to emerge coherent.

Jean

Princess is:

She is the quiet one
with the brown hair, blue eyes.
A dreamer
caught somewhere between
a woman and a child,
living a life united
by stirrups and manes.
Wanting to do
everything, with never enough
time for it all,
she rails against the
frustration of being only human.
Wanting to believe
in the good of man yet
so often disappointed -
wanting to let passion

...A hundred-word long babble...

This is my life,
this is my world.
The hot summer sun.
the wind’s bitter cold.
The triumphs,
the tears,
the complaints no one hears.
The sweat and the blood,
the sore muscles, the mud.
The children’s smiles,
the weight of their trust.
The circles, the patience,
the praises, the dust.
The first canters,
the thrills,
and the traumatic first spills.