it’s napowrimo, national poetry writing month, and i got all sentimental about those piles of awful poems i wrote as a child. and then, out it came.
not what i was
when i was a precocious child
they sent me to writing conferences
a place
for my voice
to be as loud as it wanted to be
on paper
i remember feeling
swallowed up
out of place
and at the very same
moment
a little too big for my britches
a realization
that i was at my core a
writer.
just not the kind of child writer
that won the awards
that got the approval of the
adults and their rules
i was
but i was not what they wanted.
***
when i was in my
first
painting class in college
that same feeling smacked me across the
cheek
swallowed up
out of place
and at the very same
moment
a realization
that i was at my core an
artist.
all the university students around me
focused
on learning to draw to paint to represent the world
realistically
and then
me
enthralled with color with line with the
energy
i was
but i was not what they wanted.
***
when i was heading into my third
act
that same feeling threatened
swallowed up
out of place
and at the very same
moment
a realization
that at my core i was
finally
allowing myself to be who
i was
i was not what they wanted
not interested in the rules of religion
not the pursuit of power
not the consumption of more
the way of american
still foreign on my tongue at fifty-two
i was
becoming instead who
i was
what i wanted.
