She—an unrepeated motif—waxes precocious like her ancient self.
Never mind the counterfeit eccentrics,
strange enough to be noticed but not doomed.
Their only burden is imperfection.
She’d die for these people, but they don’t realize omniscience is boring.
In preschool, she learned people are mean for no reason.
There’s no sense in spiting the inevitable,
so she gave away her quarters at bake sale.
Her mother would say, “That money is yours.”
The girl would ask, adjusting her overalls,
“If it’s mine, can’t I decide what to do with it?”
In the future, when repeating this story to a potential motif,
she’d know he’s The One when he’d say,
“What do four-year-olds need to know about capitalism?
Thanks to Walt Disney, they want to conform
and follow their hearts at the same time.”
She’d get off on his grumpy, and then notice his ring.
If he had met her first, would he still have married his wife?
It’s not worth hoping for divorce. He’s built to mate for life.
Instead of turning twenty-six, she’ll choose a chair in purgatory—
trapped between what should be and what is.
As long as she’s sitting, she may as well start smoking.
It’s a fine day for oral fixation.
At least she doesn’t smoke Parliaments like the counterfeit eccentrics.
She’d wonder if in a past life she was a dusty vacuum cleaner,
covered in what she was meant to destroy.
It’s too easy to claim hypocrisy,
too easy to cry genius for discovering what works
when for so long, failure was the only place to go.
She hasn’t been happy since she was thirteen.
The day before her first existential crisis,
her mother said, “Stop being so melodramatic.
You must want to be depressed.” Her response:
“I’m not too young for a mid-life crisis. I just won’t live to see thirty.”
She owes her life to a fear of hell,
knows we all experience hell differently. Hers is a banquet.
The proceeds will go toward ending world hunger.
At the end of the night, the keynote speaker complains
that Alfredo sauce doesn’t reheat well, so the leftovers get thrown out.