written the day after my graduation. thank you taylor swift for accompanying me on my solo contemplative walks during final year.
If anxiety were personified, at least I’d have a friend.
I shake off conversations, enjoying the image of a wet dachshund-ears flopping, damp, ridiculous. But I’m already running from the room, feigning business and rush.
Down the stairs, shut the stall door-
I can see five things,
I touch four.
A tall child, I developed late, and so I remain stunted, mind thick and blubbering like a toddler. Never a “lit up the room” girl-rather dim, never understanding how people worked, how an interaction is meant to go.
They seem to breathe where I must think to inhale,
to glide through rooms I measure step by step.
Their ease feels like privilege-an inheritance I never received.
It left me undiscriminating, appreciative of beauty wherever I find it: quiet in the greenery of the woods.
Tall oaks, slender willows, belonging ashes and beautiful hazels.
I’m the tree a child might draw-awkward, leaning, head round and sweet like a lollipop.
Still, I stand along the path, hoping no one will notice how out of place I am. Each morning, as the trail loop continues, I rehearse my daily lines-
frustrated with the flat delivery. But I try.
To avoid a five-minute carpool, I arrive an hour early.
That’s me trying.
I can’t talk to you if we meet by chance, but I’m outside.
That’s my effort.
I never know what to say.
What they’ll say.
What I’ll say about what they said.
My face burns.
My eyes sting.
The heat clings-
a sweater stuck to skin.
An imported tree in your eyeline,
awkwardly jumping in,
a weed in someone’s garden.
Polite, but misplaced.
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