Listener Lyric (Lyrical Essay)
As an English class, we read Citizen by Claudia Rankine, a book of memoirs highlighting the lifestyle of an African American. From reading this book, we learned about the art of writing lyrical essays, which are basically essays and memoirs that don’t follow a particular writing pattern or format. What is special about this type of writing is that it allows for more creativity with style, as well as being more about flow and poetic elements.
“Breakfast in Bed”
You curl up in your bed, nibbling on some whole grain bread. The room is cold but for your blanket, soaked in the night’s body heat. The blinds close your room off from the outside, allowing only slivers of light to leak in.
You used to believe that breakfast in bed would be a good thing.
But, it didn’t seem as glamorous as other people had described it.
Especially when it became more than just breakfast.
Waiting in line for your friends to pick and choose what they want to eat for lunch, you silently pick up a banana from the basket near the cash register where the lunch lady is taking orders. She looks over in your direction, then looks away, not worried about a student taking from the collection of free, assorted fruits.
You sit at a table with your friends, enjoying your banana.
“Is that all you’re eating?”
“I’m just not that hungry,” your stomach growls, but you’ve learned to control it.
“Oh,” with looks of disapproval. They think you want to look better than them. Skinnier, thinner, more beautiful. They believe you eat less on purpose.
It feels like you’re eating alone, like a solitary breakfast in a bed gone cold, as they continue to chat about their diets and such, excluding you from the conversation. Your stomach growls.
One of your friends understood. You go over to her house where her mother would feed you both.
You wonder what it would be like to have that. Imagine… being able to go home to fresh cooked meals, or at least be able to eat out somewhere.
But, when your friend can’t take you back to her house, you go to your own. You open the door to silence.
Good silence. No one to cut through the silence with the harsh yelling that you are used to, but you still wince at the sound of it.
You go to the kitchen and quickly whip up some penne pasta, then melt butter on top of it. You put away the pot, then make a plate with the pasta and a small bit of salad on the side. You walk to your room in silence.
You sit on your bed.
You begin to eat. It’s hard to understand why people would love eating in their beds. If it is so much more than breakfast, then why would it be called breakfast in bed?
You also aren’t sure what is wrong with your bed, but it didn’t seem like much of a positively anticipated action to eat food in a bed.
You think back to your friend, whose mother would feed you whenever she could.
What would that be like? To have someone like that, someone within reach?
Your stomach growls. But you’re eating? It growls more. Maybe it’s not your stomach. Maybe there is something more you hope for, wish for, hunger for.
Your friend and her mother.
You and your mother.
What a difference.
You then realize it is not your stomach growling for food.
It’s your heart.
Honors Lyrical Essayist Study
For my Honors assignment, I had to read a lyrical essay memoir and write an additional lyrical essay that followed a theme or the style of writing that featured in the memoir I read. I read Bluets by Maggie Nelson, which she wrote to be a study and meditation on the color blue and what it means to her. Below is my lyrical essay focusing on the use of color as well as the theme of perception of others which was mentioned in her book.
