The Story

My appointment was never applied for.

The Observer, tenured since birth,

watching hierarchies stack themselves

like dishes no one volunteers to wash.

The cliques lean in:

When does the new one spoil?

When does he hit his expiration?

And I, from the back of the room, take notes:

Why do they need him to?

.

Intention is the only thing that matters.

So, what is yours, dear Writer? (I ask myself the most.)

To arrive like a bulldozer blessing the rubble?

To collect friends like loyalty cards?

To be initiated, anointed, absorbed?

No. Desperation has a scent.

They can smell it from the next county over,

and they will, and they do.

.

I went to a No Kings rally last weekend.

Met a man with good eyes and a loose handshake.

But his friend kept finding my shoe with his shoe,

kept chewing his gum like a small, wet war in my ear,

the message unmistakable, ancient, dull:

There is a throne here. You are not on it.

The Golden Child doesn't need to say it twice.

,

If your intention is Expectation,

you've already lost before the soil was turned.

So, I let it go.

Curate only this:

the clean, unspectacular act of watching.

.

I know the system in and out.

Dickinson wrote in a room the size of a secret.

She knew she was writing for herself.

And Kafka—and here's the question worth the asking—

if someone had healed that boy in Kafka,

would the man have left us anything at all?

The wound is sometimes the whole point.

.

So I am here to tend mine.

Capital I, no apology.

And so one never fully expires.

I know why certain stories survive the cut.

Everything is chosen.

Everything is subjective. The door is either open or it isn't.

.

But oh, the joys of writing!