A Eulogy

 

I’m the shell of a child in a town I’ve only ever shaken hands with, 

and up to my elbows in oil and vinegar 

with mustard on my apron 

and the smell of baked bread lingering in my nostrils

long after I’ve gone home

because I had to be taught that at the end of the day, 

higher education isn’t merely a matter of being accepted, 

it’s about paying the cost.

 

And every day I have to remind myself 

that at least I have a job. 

Every day I have to remind myself 

that at least I’m eighteen. 

That unlike my married and twenty-something co-workers, 

I have the freedom to pick up and leave 

at my own leisure with nary a spouse nor child 

depending on my consistency. 

 

In the same way that my dad asks me to remind him

to pick up milk from the grocery store, 

in the same way that he says, 

“And don’t forget we need bread too”, 

I remind myself that at least I have a family 

who drives me crazy 

but always sends me off to work with love--

one that welcomes me as I return 

and makes me laugh when I didn’t think I was even capable. 

 

I have to constantly remind myself 

of my own fortune because 

I can’t come to terms with the fact 

that even though I’m knee-deep 

in one of the stagnant in-betweens of life,

things are still alright. 

 

I went to the bathroom and when I washed my hands

I bumped the porcelain cube which holds our tissues 

and it splintered into glistening shards upon the floor. 

 

I’ve never had a problem like this before, 

but now I’m breaking everything. 

The antithesis of Midas--the king with the golden touch. 

I burn the bread at work. 

Some days I forget to even put it in the oven.

I mix up orders and make the wrong sandwiches. 

I spill crab and cheese across the floor. 

While doing the dishes at home 

I drop the glass bottle of dish soap 

that has lasted in the family for ten years. 

The new cups are cracked, 

and all of these things are devoid of malicious intent.

My hands are upset with my brain 

for letting them make such clumsy mistakes, 

and my brain just shrugs its metaphorical shoulders. 

 

My bad.

 

Every week I have some new psychosomatic ailment:

cancer, pregnancy, the plague, parasites, arthritis. 

I am constantly subconsciously willing 

for something to go terribly wrong 

because I’m afraid of the body that I’m in.  

I’m afraid to admit that I’m healthy and lucky and alive. 

I’m afraid to recognize that I’m not taking advantage of what I’ve been given. 

 

I stare at the sculpted waves of blue of my childhood--

the very same tissue holder 

that I’ve seen in each bathroom in my father’s house, 

regardless of how many times he’s moved. 

It’s always been there. 

It’s not going to be anymore. 

 

I traded out a teddy bear 

for a book of Sylvia Plath’s poems 

to cradle in my arms at night,

because through her words I see her sadness, 

and I wish I could tell her that she was enough. 

I read her poems and stare 

at the shattered pieces of porcelain on the linoleum 

and think that’s all I really want in life.

 

To be enough. 

 

I want to look in the mirror 

and know not that I am enough for anybody else,

but that I am enough for myself. 

I want to look in the mirror 

and see no trace of the nervous doubt in my eyes--

the same kind of wary anxiety that flashes in the eyes of my dog, 

who doesn’t know her place among the pack 

and pushes the others around until they turn and scare her into submission. 

 

Sometimes she sits in my lap after being snapped at 

and all I can think is

we are the same.

 

I love reading poetry, 

but I can’t write it. 

 

People think writers are universal. 

Some writers write everything in the way 

that people can be athletic and therefore excel at many sports, 

but others are more specified in the way 

that people can be athletic and yet only truly excel at soccer. 

I appreciate poetry. 

Technically, I have the ability to write poetry, 

but it’s not my soccer.
And yet I find myself trying to squeeze these words

into stanzas in the same way you have to squeeze 

the very last bit of toothpaste out of a roll--

writing until I have no more words and then writing some more, 

like licking chapped lips in the winter 

to make them feel better even though doing so only makes it worse--

prostituting the one thing 

I have always felt to be the truly constant piece of me 

for the sake of a city that stole my heart 

and a school that promised me so many things, 

and then retracted their enticements 

with waggling fingers to remind me 

that they did not come without a price. 

 

I read back my verses and all I can feel is the lie

that has been created by the prose 

that I’ve mashed into monstrously unnatural, choppy little bits. 

 

Then I read Frost and Wordsworth 

and they remind me that I’ve lost focus. 

I’ve allowed the intrinsic value of what I love to do slip away. 

That there is a much bigger picture--

one that involves nature, 

and time, 

and humanity as a whole, 

and their suffering as a whole. 

 

One that involves reflections on life 

so much greater than the melancholic nonsense 

of an irrationally sullen girl caught 

between what has been, and what’s supposed to be--

stuck in an in-between like coins that slip between couch cushions--

who sips hot chocolate because 

she’s not even old enough to buy whiskey 

like old-time midnight poets might have done at one in the morning, 

but it burns going down the throat, anyway. 

 

I don’t know where I’m going with this. 

I don’t know how I’m going to end it. 

I think this might have been coherent once. 

Maybe it never has been. 

Maybe it’s not supposed to be. 

This feels like one of those letting go rituals

where you write your fears or anxieties or problems 

on a piece of paper and burn it, 

and let the wind carry away the ashes 

in the same way that you hope for 

that very thing to be carried away from your soul. 

Maybe this isn’t some whiny lament, 

but a whiny eulogy instead. 

 

In Lady Lazarus, Sylvia Plath writes of rebirth:

 

“Out of the ash/I rise with red hair/And I eat men like air.”

 

And while I won’t be eating any men tomorrow, 

I think I’ll wake up with a clean slate. 

I think I’ll bury the bad, or at least 

put it in an old shoe box and stuff it away, 

and remember the important things. 

 

Out of the shattered porcelain, 

I will rise 

and look in the mirror 

and say what I wish I could shout 

from the rooftops to the rest of the world, 

what I hope everyone will one day 

be able to admit to themselves:

 

You will always be enough.