Sometimes I wish I could be a poet.
Sometimes I wish I could be enlightened.
Sometimes I wish I could be
nothing at all—

There’s poetry in being enlightened,
but there’s also poetry from the void.
So long I’ve been sitting at its mouth,
dropping pebbles again and again to see just how far down it goes.
It’s endless—

My sister studies child psychology. She wants to help people.
I wanted to feel something,
so I studied English—

So long I’ve looked down to the blackness of the void.
I’m choosing to walk away—

I used to want to help refugees. I thought I loved justice,
but lately I’ve wondered if I only loved looking at myself—

I glanced at the void today as I do everyday,
everyday there’s some old shame that crawls out of it,
every day, but I’ve gotten used to it—

When I was manic I got into a conversation with the
assistant at my apartment, a very high achieving young man.
He asked me what my dream was, not my career goal, not
what others wanted from me, but my dream—

Do I even have a dream—

© katiewrites