home. Subsidized housing. A palace.â
People clap and cheer. Some look toward Clem, who looks freaked out. But he manages to give me a thumbs-up.
âWhat happened, basically, is my family wobbled. Thatâs what we did. But everything wobbles, the Earth in its orbit and a skylark on the wind. How else do you get back to the truth?â
I wait a second, then start singhollering my latest performance piece.
The street is a vein, a seam, a stain
between you and me, the street
is an asphalt river. I took a long
     swim there.
With my mother and my brother.
We would not let each other drown.
No. We let each other swim there.
No coins in our pockets to weigh us
     down
and our lungs and hearts filled with
hope. And when hope failed, with faith
that the street would do what it was
     meant to do,
deliver us whole and untroubled,
     somewhere new.
Let me start at the beginning.
     We were living
in the Buick Skylark and Mom still
     managed to look
like a million bucks every dayâ¦
I donât care whether people clap when I am through. I donât care if I win the finals or not. All I care about is that Iâve found home.
Sara Cassidy has lived in a logging camp, a five-by-seven-foot survival shelter in the Manitoba bush, a refugee camp (as an international witness), an apartment over a downtown biker bar, in youth hostels in Canada and Scotland as well as in large, comfortable houses. In every place, she had a pen and a journal to help steer her way through. Skylark is her fifth book for youth.
People clap and cheer. Some look toward Clem, who looks freaked out. But he manages to give me a thumbs-up.
âWhat happened, basically, is my family wobbled. Thatâs what we did. But everything wobbles, the Earth in its orbit and a skylark on the wind. How else do you get back to the truth?â
I wait a second, then start singhollering my latest performance piece.
The street is a vein, a seam, a stain
between you and me, the street
is an asphalt river. I took a long
     swim there.
With my mother and my brother.
We would not let each other drown.
No. We let each other swim there.
No coins in our pockets to weigh us
     down
and our lungs and hearts filled with
hope. And when hope failed, with faith
that the street would do what it was
     meant to do,
deliver us whole and untroubled,
     somewhere new.
Let me start at the beginning.
     We were living
in the Buick Skylark and Mom still
     managed to look
like a million bucks every dayâ¦
I donât care whether people clap when I am through. I donât care if I win the finals or not. All I care about is that Iâve found home.
Sara Cassidy has lived in a logging camp, a five-by-seven-foot survival shelter in the Manitoba bush, a refugee camp (as an international witness), an apartment over a downtown biker bar, in youth hostels in Canada and Scotland as well as in large, comfortable houses. In every place, she had a pen and a journal to help steer her way through. Skylark is her fifth book for youth.
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