The following piece was originally published in the notes app of an old cell phone. I copied it into my new phone where it’s been sitting ever since. I thought considering we’re coming up on five years since I originally wrote it, it might be fitting to post it.

I wrote this poem a few weeks before my twenty-fourth birthday. It was also five months after graduating from college and four months after getting married; suffice to say a lot had been going on, and I was finally reaching a period of calm. This is what became of a brainstorming session one night during that calm period.

Surely An Ill Humor

Bear with me while I work this out… Do you ever question your existence? Or wonder at the persisting insistence that our experiences are real and valid?

I don’t know. Sometimes it’s all too intense. The thought of living, of being alive. I’ve recently thought it might not be what we all knew to be true, this party line we all bought into.

Be good, do well, stand up straight, walk that line maybe you won’t end up in hell. Swell.

The cookie cutter day to day, that’s meant to show us the way to fulfillment and success and pride. It can be a tough pill to swallow sometimes.

Buckle up and go with me on a different ride.

See for a while now it’s seemed to me, my life wasn’t being lived for or even by me. I’m an object static, but not at rest. Only moving, going, doing at another’s bequest.

While I can feel my blood pumping, heart pounding inside my chest, mind churning and burning for a way out of this mess, this hole.

This whole role isn’t exactly as I’d guessed it would be. What’s my line; where do I stand; who can I be? Anything? Today. Today I’m free breaking fast from my cage of perpetuity.

I’ll be seen and heard in the voice of my choosing. No more being passed by other candidates and thanked for losing. I’ve got the tools I need, just need a new combination, expectation and a clearer direction. Once I get there, I’ll be better, just you wait and see.

In the meantime thanks for humoring me.