My professor says she is looking for nuance,
hidden meanings,
the message,
the central idea,
the story.
She teaches us to be hungry for stories.
To hunt for them like our ancestors would hunt for woolly mammoths.
To search for them like astronomers search for stars in the sky.
To look for them like your father looking for where he left his beer on a cold winter night.
I once learned that everyone has a story.
I wanted to know them all.
I made them up sitting in libraries at 3pm
and dorm rooms at 1am.
I wasn’t afraid to ask the tough questions.
I’m still not.
I took the journey and ran with it
and one day, I ran into a poem
that was okay with doing nothing.
And, in my English major writerly ways,
I started assigning it a meaning.
A story.
Filling in the plot holes with cement.
The sentences with scaffolding.
Only for me to realize that, maybe
the poem truthfully just
did not want to do anything.
Maybe it is just learning how to exist
in a room of people
without feeling like they’re going crazy.
Maybe it is still learning how to be able to talk about itself
and not feel ashamed
or like they’re taking up space.
Maybe they have recently realized that they aren’t the best poem,
the healthiest poem,
the kindest poem,
but they sure as hell are going to try
to be the best version of themselves
they possibly can.
They have a heart full of gold
and a brain full of mirrors
and only so much confidence
within themselves.
But they are trying
nonetheless.
Trying their best
to live in a world
they don’t feel like they belong in yet.
Trying to just be
and learn that that’s okay.
Trying, just like I am,
to live on the page
in their truest way.
So I left the poem alone.
Let it live and learn and love and grow
into the best poem it can be.
