This year has been one in which I’ve learned about myself and my body in ways I had previously never even fathomed. At times, my body seemed meaningful and my direction in life intentional. But in other moments, I felt dissatisfied with the person I had become and the people I found around me. This poem is about a boy. He wasn’t bad or cruel or horrible… but he wasn’t for me. Our relationship made me fear the idea of settling for something that wasn’t good enough. In turn, I was trapped by the standard I had spent the last year trying to defy.
He asked me if I wanted the lights on or off:
it had been a horribly thought out question.
Either way, the sunlight would trickle in through his windows because the blinds no longer worked.
Either way, I would still see the curve of his neck as it met his shoulders
and still feel every reason I had for being with him and for not being with him at the same time.
He approached me.
In a slightly sick sense of the word it felt like fate,
Not because it was bad per say,
but because it was nothing.
It felt as if I was fated to watch television reruns,
live in a suburban town that was just out of reach of a city,
gain more weight than I had wanted,
and all the while still be his girl.
I never imagined that fate could be as ordinary as the way sunlight catches the dusty air of a boy’s bedroom,
and as completely uncomplex as me answering I didn’t care either way.
