They asked me what I was

Like one word could summarize all

The unending challenges faced and defeated,

The jokes that made me snort milk bubbles,

The hobbies that gave my pile of bones and cartilage a unifying purpose,

The outside influences that had the power to speed and steady my heart rate,

And the gifts nature provided me to

Crazy glue my shattered emotions back together when they broke and I stopped

Fighting.

 

Well maybe one word can do that.

But how am I going to find it?

How could I take the time to find a word that shows my dedication to social reform

Because our skin color is no different if we close our eyes

And take the time to touch,

Because our gender is just the dress code

For those who look without seeing,

Because a better education system will give today’s generation money and ideas And Tomorrow’s a world worth living in,

Because funding art does not support a splatter of color on a wall

But a splatter of ideas in our fellow man’s head.

How can I find one word to describe my Advocation of the eyes

And encouragement of ideas?

 

And if I find that word is it going to fit my own mind?

Does it have the strength to rubber band itself around my cranium,

About to burst all of its raw, untamed speculations free?

Can it contain my rewritten, revised, often repetitive story ideas

Or rubrics for the next sketch I wheedle out onto paper?

It knows about “imagining”,

But does it know that I’m ‘Magining?

Does it know that I’m young and not ready to stop just yet?

Just like my stories,

Things can look better on paper.

 

But suppose this word can encompass all of that.

Suppose I found the four leaf clover

Amongst the hen’s teeth.

Does it know that I’m not just living?

Could it understand that when I die it’s just my body that goes,

Because I still want to be here in the form of

Crinkling paper, captivated movie audiences or inspired graphite lines?

Could it get that after my feet become one with the soil,

I have to keep Existing?

 

Perhaps there simply isn’t a word like a mitten,

That fits so perfectly, or

Perhaps I’m being too hard on my Webster’s Third.

Maybe there is a word that I can utilize in a different way

With a meaning not assigned to it but

Crafted out of creativity.

Perhaps I’ll start Dreaming like I am wont to do,

And when I awaken onto a glowing mirror of cables and code,

My dream will have granted me the word of which

I am.