A Poem of Reclamation

I knew what was right and I knew

what was good. I knew how to keep myself

satisfied and smiling and I knew

how to make my life just a bit

interesting. I knew I wasn’t happy

but I could feel in my body

that I wasn’t lonely. I wasn’t

tired enough to drown myself

in a pond, but things never got bad

enough for me to give up and stop trying.

The summer I wasted was the summer I realized

I wanted nothing but a simple life.

My dreams would turn up half-realized,

and life would go on. I would make

enough to survive, and life would go on.

And I knew I would be disappointed

it turned out that way, but not enough to be

devastated. Sometimes the greatest tragedy

is the knowing. When sadness creeps up a little

more than expected, and you know exactly what temperature

to keep the house at so you’re never lonely

but never happy. I knew my apathy was killing me

and I could see the irony. I knew

the reason for my sadness was my

loneliness, and the reason for my failure

was my cowardice, but I just couldn’t dare myself

to become more than what I saw.

That night, I dreamt I leapt from

my side of the roof to the side where

happiness, and everything else, was waiting.

In that dream, I laughed and killed fear and

came alive in the darkness where I saw nothing

but the faraway glow of a city, where people loved.

In the morning, I woke up to the end of the rain.

Outside, the sky felt brighter past the storm

and the trees were green again. They were

growing again, and for a moment,

I thought it was beautiful, the silence

and all, and then I moved on.

Aria Shum is a poet and prose-writer from Chicago. Her work is published in After Hours: A Journal of Chicago Writing and Art, Eunoia Review, Ignatian Literary Magazine, and more, which can be found at aria-shum.carrd.co. She is currently studying violin performance at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.