this is how you’re gonna
go far, 1.5.
this is how you’re gonna
prove them wrong.

first, drop the number.
though they tell you otherwise,
it is as much a part of you
as the gum you stick under
your desk.
this world wasn’t made
for decimals or the 4.0’s
who couldn’t scrape the
digits off their skin if you
handed them a chainsaw.
you’re not going
where they’re going.

forget everything about
balancing chemical equations
and own the way you drink
your coffee black —
one day it’ll impress the
gold-skinned barista girl
and craft a story that
the periodic table could
only dream of.
purge the formulas from
your system and replace
them with bus routes
and train schedules and how
to become properly lost.
there is no theorem for the
fire escapes you’ll sneak onto
or the celestial alleyways
you’ll stumble across.
know your strengths, because
they’re practically shining
out of your pores.
literary analysis is worthless
compared to the way you
talk to strangers, and the
genius you’ll find shooting up
underneath the overpass
won’t care about how much
russian literature you’ve read.
what he’ll care about
is how you paint him every
sunset he’s ever missed
with the words you send
echoing off the concrete.

let every answer you’ve ever
bubbled in vaporize with your
mid-december sidewalk breath
and don’t wait to see whose
haggard face they blow into
next. you’re not going
where they’re going.

you are not a number.
you are who this world
was made for.