Poetry

Away from home with imposter syndrome
Fading far from the plight of perfectionism
Taunted by the unexplored, not on any exec boards
Sometimes struggling to just get out of bed

My roommate wakes up and runs ten miles
While I have clothes heaped in piles
And a hundred unorganized files on my desktop
Too anxious to answer an email

In constant comparison and competition
I’m not motivated by grades or majors
Student governance or unpaid labor
But paranoid I need to fit in

two cultured,
my mind cluttered,
i struggle,
attempt to juggle. 

There are twenty-one of me

inside of me

One for each year of life 

on this Earth 

You are not carried downstream by a river
But the ocean rocks you back and forth

There once was a boy oh so wealthy

My mother was born with a green ribbon wrapped around her left thumb

I stumble through life like a dehydration-addled ascetic in a desert during the apocalypse

In the quiet nights of winter 
The air sighs with an icy chill 

Monday grips a pen
Neurotic scribbles fill a blank page

You just are, no need to play a part

Names and Pronouns and Sexuality

Can change as easily as the seasons 

It is accepted and no less normal