I am not a poem in twenty-five lines that show you who I am in nouns, adjectives, and verbs.
I will shut myself up so I don’t have to explain what on earth I’m scribbling on that wrinkled sheet of paper.

I am open notebooks tumbling from a shelf on my bookcase as their blank pages taunt me.
I will let their pages flutter in the air, making sounds like the flaps of bird wings until I have lived enough to spill over the blue lines and red margins.

I am not the flawed heroine in a romance novel who willingly picks up the pieces left behind by those before her.
I will make a secret list poem out of the fragments and a prose poem out of the shards.

I am a monster with the thick stench of anger and sharply aching roars.
I will not become a poem.

I am not a saint.
I will probably at some point say something that makes you cringe inward at my careless stumbles and the flaws that rise from me like thorns.

I am willing to pack all my clothes into a dented suitcase the height of my hip and run away from the world to join the circus, but only if I can’t stop myself.
I will not become so adventurous that I won’t come back if you want me to.

I am not made of glass so you can laugh and scowl all you want as I pass or offend you with my thoughts and my inability to play the violin.
I will not break anywhere you can see.

I am trying to become published by my ninetieth birthday because honestly, I’m no budding artist and I know that very few novelists ever really make it.
I will, until then, keep walking round and round like I’m trying to find the place where rainbows end so I don’t have to stop, barely evading the pity in your gaze.

I am not redundant.
I will not be redundant.

I am not redundant.
I will not be redundant.

I am full of random bits of information about Harry Potter and Doctor Who and House even though I don’t have a wand, a Tardis, or a lot of sarcastic remarks.
I will probably never do anything with them, yet I am slightly happier this way.

I am not the most complex person in this world or any other ones.
I will be intimidated if I like you, brilliant if we’re on the right subject, boring if you intimidate me, funny if you like me, kind of nonexistent to everyone else, and nervous all around.

I am sometimes full of poetic thoughts and sentences wound so tightly and urgently they haunt long after the last word, but only on paper.
I will, desperately, try to come alive not only on paper.