speakers,
too many names called,
and in the end,
we don’t even get our diplomas—
that comes later, in the mail.
There is hugging
and pictures,
and introducing my parents to
friends and teachers.
And that’s it.
It is over.
All that’s left to do
is put my stuff in the car.
i.
All those garbage bags
and plastic bins are back in my room
and instead of being yelled at to pack,
I am being yelled at to unpack.
It doesn’t seem right to be here—
in this house,
in this room
with this stupid flowered wallpaper,
but I have no where else to go.
I have no money.
I have no job.
My parents allow me
one week before I have to start job hunting.
I want more time.
I want to relax
and be with my friends,
but when the week is up,
my dad leaves the classifieds in my room.
I look for a job,
but I don’t know what I want to do.
I don’t know what I can do.
I make phone calls and send out my résumé
for jobs that I’m not sure I want.
No one calls me back.
After two unsuccessful weeks
I take a temp job at a hedge fund.
I’m not interested in finance,
but it pays well.
I make phone calls and copies.
I go to the drugstore
to get my boss’s prescriptions
and look up what they’re for on the Internet.
Weeks pass and all I learn
is to stay out of my boss’s way
when the stock market does badly.
After a few weeks
I get a job at a publishing house.
The pay is terrible, but at least it’s a career—
something I can see myself doing
for more than a few weeks.
The work is still crap.
I still make phone calls and copies,
but at least now
the product is something tangible,
something I can be proud of.
I can deal with all the busywork,
but my boss is awful.
She rubs all my mistakes in my face
like a dog that shit on the rug.
She treats me like an idiot,
like I don’t have the right to a learning curve.
Most days I go home crying
and my dad tells me
welcome to the real world.
Fall is coming
and I feel like I’ve fallen off the map.
It’s the first time in eighteen years
that I am not getting ready to go to school.
Since the age of three I’ve been on a track—
preschool, elementary school,
middle school, high school, college—
with never more than a summer in between.
I wish I could have waited
between high school and college.
I wish I could have moved more slowly,
but that wasn’t part of the plan.
I have found myself talking about the weather a lot.
I think that means I have entered the real world,
that I am an adult,
because now I have awful gaps in time
to fill as I wait for trains and elevators
to take me to places I do not want to go.
This city is ugly
and the concrete is hard on my feet.
Everyone pushes and is angry
at the people who push them.
I am not happy.
I am not unhappy.
I am frozen somewhere in the middle
that is so much worse.
I am NOWHERE.
Nothing is happening
and I am getting more and more sad.
Is this what all the years of schooling were for?
To prepare me for this
sense of being stuck in the middle?
What was the point?
No one said I was going to be this sad.
No one said I would still be crying.
I am so lonely.
Every day is the same—
trying to move slower than the rest,
to not be so angry,
so serious in the morning,
to not make myself crazy.
I stand on the packed subway
jammed in, pushed too far
to hold on to the sticky poles.
There are bags pressing against my thighs,
hands touching mine,
a man’s chest against my shoulder.
I would stay on the subway longer,
let the crowd rub up against me
as the subway rocks,
but I have to get to work.
I don’t think that I am happy,
but then again, I don’t know.
Sometimes I get so caught up
in the process of living—
of eating, dressing, taking the train to work,
that I don’t give it enough thought.
Maybe happiness is being content.
But is this really it?
I am only twenty-one.
I have been out of college only a few months.
I don’t want to have a job
that I think is merely all right.
But then I see street sweepers,
men polishing marble
too many names called,
and in the end,
we don’t even get our diplomas—
that comes later, in the mail.
There is hugging
and pictures,
and introducing my parents to
friends and teachers.
And that’s it.
It is over.
All that’s left to do
is put my stuff in the car.
i.
All those garbage bags
and plastic bins are back in my room
and instead of being yelled at to pack,
I am being yelled at to unpack.
It doesn’t seem right to be here—
in this house,
in this room
with this stupid flowered wallpaper,
but I have no where else to go.
I have no money.
I have no job.
My parents allow me
one week before I have to start job hunting.
I want more time.
I want to relax
and be with my friends,
but when the week is up,
my dad leaves the classifieds in my room.
I look for a job,
but I don’t know what I want to do.
I don’t know what I can do.
I make phone calls and send out my résumé
for jobs that I’m not sure I want.
No one calls me back.
After two unsuccessful weeks
I take a temp job at a hedge fund.
I’m not interested in finance,
but it pays well.
I make phone calls and copies.
I go to the drugstore
to get my boss’s prescriptions
and look up what they’re for on the Internet.
Weeks pass and all I learn
is to stay out of my boss’s way
when the stock market does badly.
After a few weeks
I get a job at a publishing house.
The pay is terrible, but at least it’s a career—
something I can see myself doing
for more than a few weeks.
The work is still crap.
I still make phone calls and copies,
but at least now
the product is something tangible,
something I can be proud of.
I can deal with all the busywork,
but my boss is awful.
She rubs all my mistakes in my face
like a dog that shit on the rug.
She treats me like an idiot,
like I don’t have the right to a learning curve.
Most days I go home crying
and my dad tells me
welcome to the real world.
Fall is coming
and I feel like I’ve fallen off the map.
It’s the first time in eighteen years
that I am not getting ready to go to school.
Since the age of three I’ve been on a track—
preschool, elementary school,
middle school, high school, college—
with never more than a summer in between.
I wish I could have waited
between high school and college.
I wish I could have moved more slowly,
but that wasn’t part of the plan.
I have found myself talking about the weather a lot.
I think that means I have entered the real world,
that I am an adult,
because now I have awful gaps in time
to fill as I wait for trains and elevators
to take me to places I do not want to go.
This city is ugly
and the concrete is hard on my feet.
Everyone pushes and is angry
at the people who push them.
I am not happy.
I am not unhappy.
I am frozen somewhere in the middle
that is so much worse.
I am NOWHERE.
Nothing is happening
and I am getting more and more sad.
Is this what all the years of schooling were for?
To prepare me for this
sense of being stuck in the middle?
What was the point?
No one said I was going to be this sad.
No one said I would still be crying.
I am so lonely.
Every day is the same—
trying to move slower than the rest,
to not be so angry,
so serious in the morning,
to not make myself crazy.
I stand on the packed subway
jammed in, pushed too far
to hold on to the sticky poles.
There are bags pressing against my thighs,
hands touching mine,
a man’s chest against my shoulder.
I would stay on the subway longer,
let the crowd rub up against me
as the subway rocks,
but I have to get to work.
I don’t think that I am happy,
but then again, I don’t know.
Sometimes I get so caught up
in the process of living—
of eating, dressing, taking the train to work,
that I don’t give it enough thought.
Maybe happiness is being content.
But is this really it?
I am only twenty-one.
I have been out of college only a few months.
I don’t want to have a job
that I think is merely all right.
But then I see street sweepers,
men polishing marble
Similar Books
