What does it mean to not know?
To be a clueless
Watered down version
Of a smarter, braver
Me
So out of my depth
adrift in waters
I have never seen.
It feels like failure
Like heat,
Shame that boils,
That brands.
A mark all can see
That everything has
Led me to this
One moment
Where I am speechless
Fear of falling, floundering, failing
And still –
I find nothing
Anything.
Drowning is too cliché to claim.
The white marble walls of academia
a prison of expectation,
the soliloquies of my peers
extending beyond the
safety of harbored piers.
Jailed in perfection I built
brick by brick,
even Edgar Allan Poe
would scorn my mirrored cask.
Drowning is too cliche to suggest
The white marble walls of academia
Are not a prison of expectations
The silloquies of my peers
Extending beyond the
Safety of harboured piers
Jailed in perfection I built
Brick by brick
Even Edgar Allen Poe
Would scorn my mirrored
cask.
See
I don’t know the references I need,
Have not memorized the facts to cite
I’m lost in the
Mighty oaks
That are not native to
My life
And still I feel, I know,
I should be more
Foreign maps already memorized
Compass, not yet found,
But already aligned
Constellations shifted overhead
Why don’t I know their names?
I can’t breathe
In this melancholic hour
Unmatched by those
Who have walked this path
Without me
Just let me slip under the waves
And finally
Succumb to this
Macabre fate
And then
Laughter
Even in the crashing storms,
They are others.
They find me.
One will buy me tea,
another will offer notes:
mapped paths,
aligned breath.
My confidence falters,
yet their confidence in me
Remains.
Because I know how to
Care
How to build
How to be there
Yes, I am out of my depth—
and so they find me,
pull me onto their own
raft of shambles.
Together, we will count the waves,
sway beneath shooting stars,
and laugh.
For what does it mean
to know?
Samantha Fowler 