have just caved in
and the plaster crumbled
and fell on my head
and temporarily rendered me
unconscious.
Somehow my dreams
got out of their cage,
fluttered into the real world
and got run over by cars
like in a poorly-played game of Frogger.
Squished, dying and twitching in the
middle of the road.
My dreams need to just
stay to themselves
and get back in their little
gilded cage in my brain.
I read The New Yorker.
The entire New Yorker
from last month or something,
full of fiction.
Fantastic fiction.
And yet,
some part of me was like
"You're trying too hard,
give it up, loser."
And so I didn't go on to read
"Art in America"
I felt like that would be trying even harder.
I don't think I am, half the time though.
I'm just trying to get my bearings,
trying to make sense of the world.
Make sense of writing and art and poetry.
Something inside of me collapsed,
the scaffolding fell down and buried
me under it.
Ouch.
Poetry became this big
word looming
in the corner.
It's about to jump out and yell
"BOO!"
and make me nearly die.
Because this newly
refreshed pessimist just went
"HA. Like you'll ever be good enough."
And I believe that part of me,
a lot, actually.
What's to say I'm not just a suburban
girl trying too hard and being a big faker,
a fucking hipster or something?
What's to say I'll ever be good enough
to make it as a real "poet"?
And who's going to tell me
before it's too late?
I feel like my life will one day collapse
and I'll be homeless and in student-loan debt
without my sanity and/or dignity.
Wandering around.
What if pretty words aren't enough to save me?
What if thoughts and philosophy fail me?
What if Cummings and Ginsberg and O'Hara and Roethke
desert me? And leave me for dead?
It's so terrifying.
And I feel like I'll never make it to Columbia.
It's in New York.
It only has 7,000-odd undergrads.
It costs (as of right now) $56,681 per year.
For four years that's $226,000-something.
And the acceptance rate is 11%.
I'm not that good.
And I know it.
But that really resilient part of me
is still rooting for me to not give up
on my biggest, toughest, scariest ambition.
I have to get of here.
I have to prove myself to myself,
prove I'm not trying too hard,
prove I'm worthy of Columbia.
Prove I can be a poet.
This is going to be one hell of
a journey,
my life just seemingly got
a lot harder.
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