“Shoot for the stars,” they say
But I can’t aim for their hearts
and have them return
the favor by convincing
the galaxy to collide
with my wants, the way I view
myself cynically, is the following:
I am a one-woman clown show
with a humor broken as bread, and a questionable
assumption of a healing process that left
me crumpled on the sidewalk, all crumbs and crust.
Who am I, one girl without a tragic
backstory, valuing art and its timelessness
along with practicality and its urgency
for time I’m living the double life
because settling for one is settling
for none to ask my ceiling to jump
on New Year’s Day so when it grows taller and I,
more ambitious too, it’ll be another tragic turn
of events where I’ll scatter pieces of me
into everything, everywhere
and be left with those shards, returned
and met halfway
no pain will be enough to be
on hospital television everything in me is average.
Therefore, I won’t intrude the sky from its beauty rest,
then pull out a gun, press a few buttons, and maybe explode
a constellation, shatter a beam of light
into a million blinding pieces or whatever happens when one
has a hole no skin can cling to heck I’m not a scientist
“The sky is where you stop,” they say, so I balanced
on a tightrope, sixty feet into the air, as a six-feet tall circus
performer with a red nose, undeserving as seen
by the onlookers, disbelieving with their empty praise
and boxes of popcorn I would never be invited to eat with them.
Their words zipline through the horizon, spanning
from “congrats for shooting for the stars” or “the sky is the limit”
but in truth, they’ve been wanting me to stop, to fail, and fall
So I straightened my back and held
a book in my head, with no hands, supported by solely gravity
I am no scientist but I can learn to be the best balancer
this world has ever judged so cynically.
Once my feet, blistered from high heels, reach the end
of the tightrope, I can take these challenging shoes
off since I can reach my ceiling with ease both of them
both of my dreams and it feels like pointing a gun
to the sky, aiming hard, feeling the redness that comes
with being a fool, then with nobody watching
I pulled the trigger everybody’s eyes are suddenly
on my skin and though it doesn’t matter, I felt myself grow taller.
Cailey Tin is a poet, aspiring author, and interview editor.
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