When I Grow Up...

To answer your question,
I sir, want everything.

I want fame and fortune and grandeur, and light,
So that I may throw it from my penthouse window one night.

I want to amass masses of gluttonous wealth,
So as to lose it all and gain myself.

I want to know what success feels like for them,
So that I may never seek after it again.

And when all that are left are glowing embers and smoke,
I will light my cigarette and gently toke.

When I grow up I want to fail,
And make a clean break from the judgement scale.

They will know me as the one who almost had it all,
Because they couldn't comprehend that I chose to free fall.

To answer your question,
I sir, want everything.

And then I want it all to crumble,
So just the truth remains.

Smoke

My hands smell like cigarettes and pages,

Funny,

I haven't smoked in a long time.

My cheeks burn from ten dollar wine,

How that pen grips differently when I am alone.

I often wonder if Vonnegut could even grasp a ledger,

After his fourth glass or if his hands

Reeked of typewriter ink and solitude.

Even Emily wore it at her wrists and neck,

Splashing it on for her walls and panes,

My hands smell like cigarettes and pages,

Funny,

I haven't smoked in such a long time.

A Letter of Resignation

I apologize, but it seems to me that I am not cut out for this after all,

I was not created to be created,

I have created myself to do just that.

It seems that this track lane is indeed shorter,

But too close to the center for my comfort.

It seems that the smog of this city chokes the life back into me,

Even though it is artificial.

I am not cut out for this after all it seems,

So with this I leave you to pursue

Blues and Yellows and Greens.

Failure Has Never Felt Like This

He spoke slowly, selecting his words from the shelf space created by our silence. His collar rested slightly askew, as if he had left his home in a rush and had since forgotten he was wearing one at all. The desk in front of me exhaled deeply, scribbling notes as he carefully strolled through each open-ended lecture point. My pen rested stagnant, hovering over my notebook. It was as mesmerized as I had become, listening to Thoreau's lines read aloud: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." I could feel that anciently familiar stirring deep within my chest, opening me to this author who just minutes before I had considered "too transcendentalist for my taste." The professor continued to trill that Thoreau had been a brilliant naturalist, and could have become a scientist but had declined. At this my pen seized, and fell.

I wanted to be a doctor. Truly. Yet, there were times that my mind would longingly drift from anatomy to literature. At particularly difficult junctions, my mind would pencil the words behind the back of the eyes, pressing against the inside of my face, simply to give it texture. I watched my pen roll from my desk onto the titled tile, fleeing my scratched notepad. I didn't follow it.

My moment of epiphany quickly turned on its side, weeping broken brakes headed for a guardrail. All I wanted to do was write. I just wanted to write so I could breathe, so I could think. If I could just fucking think for a minute, just get a second. I had been studying science. Science. I could do that for the rest of my life...

At that moment, just for an instant, I watched myself packing a duffel bag. I watched myself purchase a one-way ticket. I watched myself run.

The classroom suffocated me. The walls were lifting me at my wrists and ankles, wringing the fluids from me like a sweaty towel. I placed my face in my palms, pressing the full weight of my head against them. I wasn't going to be a doctor.

I wasn't going to be a doctor.

I finally reached for my wayward pen. "Just because I can do something, does not mean I should." Yes. I wasn't going to be doctor. But, I was going to trek the globe. I was going to hold dozens of tiny faces in my arms and teach them how to read. I was going to fall asleep on a train in India and come back from an Australian beach inevitably sunburnt. I wasn't going to be a doctor. I was going be happy.

A Response to the Question: Why Would Anyone Study English?

I watched her squirm in her chair, steadily stumbling along each line of words with the acceleration of an unmanned, downhill freight train. Excitement pressed itself against her skin, testing the strength of its elasticity, building with each syllable that formed at the front of her down-turned mouth. Her eyes flittered upward to mine, occasionally testing her correctness against my reaction. She turned the final page without hesitation, screeching to an abrupt halt with the words, "The End". My eyes welled momentarily as she sprang from her seat and wrapped her tiny arms around my neck. "You did it", I whispered against the hush of the library, "You finished your first book."
We walked to her mother's van just a few minutes later, bubbling with anticipation. "We have some big news!", I couldn't help but well up a second time. She ran from me to her mother's side, and beckoned her mother to bend her ear downward. "Not now", the mother brushed the girl away, as she walked around to the driver's door. "But", my face flushed with a disbelieving anger, "She finished her first book today!". The van pulled from the parking lot with little regard, leaving behind it a trail of dark oil. The tears that had welled for the cause of pride now flowed for bitter disappointment. I could only read with this girl one afternoon a week, and her mother had her every day.

--
"Why don't you go outside today?", my mother yelled over the whir of the vacuum cleaner." I shrugged, continuing to stare out the window. At the age of twelve I didn't say much, or do much for that matter. Most afternoons I simply sat and thought. "Are you sad?", my mother turned off the screaming machine. "Are the kids at school nice to you?" It wasn't that anyone was cordial or not, but that I was indifferent to them. I had things to say, ideas to contribute, but they were blocked somehow, locked behind a dam that kept words from flowing through my open mouth. I often heard my parents quietly discuss my "confidence issues", wondering between themselves if I was socially stunted. Some weeks into summer vacation, my mother was cleaning out her closet when she came across a dusty relic; her typewriter. She placed it in front of me, letting me run my fingers along the keys. For the first time I felt a tug deep within myself. I had found my translator. I spent the next couple days fixed in front of it, feeding it page after page of blank paper until I had typed out my very first short story. It was the story of a girl who had been born without a voice, and cried every day because she had so much to say, but no one could hear her.

--
The little girl ran to greet me the following week, thudding against my knees as she linked her arms around me. "Well, hello to you too!", I smiled down at her, "Why don't you go pick out a book for us today?" She made her way through the library shelves, checking over each brightly decorated cover. Books spilled from her arms as she made her way back to our couch. I knew we would be lucky to make it through one of her fifteen selections, which was exactly what we did. When our session had finished, I slowly pulled a wrapped package from my purse. I watched her face reflect the grave expression of my own. "This is very important", I handed her the glinting package, "You probably won't use this right now, but make sure to keep it in a safe place for later, ok?" Her forehead furrowed as she leafed through the blank pages of the notebook. "What does this say?", she held up the cover to me. "It is a note to you, for later.", a sad smile crept along the corners of her mouth. "But, what does it say?" I traced my finger along the words as I read them aloud:

"Write. No matter what you think or feel, write it all down. Even if no one listens to you, your words are safe between the covers of this book."

The Comeback Kid

The heart rate monitor patiently chirped for my attention as I fumbled with my previously perfectly balanced Anthology of U.S. Women Writers. As I was breathless after three miles of jogging, I simply leaned the 1400 page monster against the blinking heart symbol. I already felt like I was having a heart attack. I didn't need some pretentious treadmill to confirm that for me. This was my life; running with an Aunt Lute Anthology that weighed enough to give me a substantial upper body workout along with my cardio.
Although I may have looked quite pretentious myself, I was simply continually trying to make space in my ever shortening days for class, work, homework, and exercise. At times, that translated to me running like a library thief. Yet, I was trying to do these things. Trying.
One year ago, I had almost given up on trying. I was on my "sabbatical from life", which I see now really only translated to my "I am going to quit and name it something else." I am now running and reading, but for all the strange stigma that may have been correlated with that, I have suddenly found myself in a better place than I had honestly ever been. My Winter Quarter grades have come in as a line of beautiful, beautiful A's, and my Spring Quarter is coming along in the same manner. I am in love with my classes, even almost Physics... a little. I am working a job that allows me to get moderate sleep, and even find time to do things for myself, like go out dancing every once in a while. Everything is finally nestled into a place where I can manage it, an environment in which I have my academic and social lives under a mostly balanced control. I have never felt so, well..successful.
I assume that this new found stability is the reason I get stabbing pains in my gut every time I look to the future. I am applying to schools in Britain, a dream I had always thought would stay dormant until now. I want to go. I want to move. Yet, I enjoy the feeling of finally being a stable adult. A new country would force me to begin again, uprooting all that I have fought to tie down over the course of a very difficult three years. My hands shake each time I even think about finishing my applications. I suppose my fear of failure sleeps as little as I do.
If I finish the applications and am not accepted anywhere, I will be crushed. If I submit my applications, get in, and then struggle, I will be crushed. I often thought that human beings, much like insects, can only take one or two good crushings before they become a streak on the carpet.
"I am going to quit and call it something else" Autumn would have backed down by now. She would have deemed the task of international relocation too risky, and then would have daydreamed about moving for the next twenty years. Wise Autumn will not do that. I have named her "Wise Autumn" because she is now wise to other parts of the world, or in other words she has seen some stuff. I will finish my applications. I have to. No matter how stable I may be for now, I will become less so if I don't take the opportunity to free fall into my potential. If I am crushed, then I am crushed. I have to use my fear as a challenging mechanism. Otherwise, I will end up being that girl who never wanted anything to change, so she finally graduated from college at the age of ninety-eight and lives in a two story house full of exotic birds. Or, something to that effect.
I suppose I am simply stating that I am not going to fall back into a pattern of self-destruction. I refuse to. I may be scared, but I am twice as stubborn. The last time I took a risk, I ended up four thousand miles from home and madly in love. Hitting send on an email is nothing. It is time to see exactly what I am made of. I could come out of this heartbroken, but I could also accomplish my most far-fetched childhood dream. I have come this far, and have everything I ever wanted teetering on the edge of a very steep cliff. I have entered The Big Leagues. Guess that would make me The Comeback Kid.