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By Emily Kagan '04
And they’ll tell you your future is bright, You, about to embark on the rest of your life. They’ll tell you that this moment is for reflecting on the work to be done. Write down your goals and paste them to your palms So that everything you touch feels like a promise. This is what they told me… But I’ve got a rib cage full of rainy Decembers. And Tuesdays filled with poetry tucked behind my ears. I’ve been writing down the Fridays with the Saturdays and stuffing them in my socks for years. They warm the puddle-dunked shoes that bear my books off to class, conveniently folding into paper cranes to dry themselves in the wind. On my right arm I taped the definition of the word “ecumenical.” But on my left I have instructions on how to make my voice lose its shake when I ask questions in class. Below the elbow I will write down how to get my cheeks not to blush when I figure that out. I swallowed a picture of a broken heart. I slept past lunches and stitched all those daydreams into a blanket for my shoulders. I never learned how to drive a stick shift, but I have a note that says I tried, crammed in the broken taillight of a Honda Civic. I’ve got a backpack full of instructions of how to cultivate fertile 19-year-old self-slaughter and reconstruction. On the backs of my eyelids I wrote down midnight promises of commitment to Organic Chemistry that I broke at 5 p.m. promptly. But yesterday I saw a man dressed in rain, begging for change on my way to econ class. And I don’t think I have a place to put that. I didn’t come here to fill my hands with tomorrows, Rather to collect and shape the character of my yesterdays. Somewhere it happens That switch from what you will be, to what you are. |
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