Pinterest preaches about the Jack-o-lantern sunsets
and the smell of forgiveness mixed with PUMPKIN SPICE!!!!!
The quotes from the latest rom-coms and the green, vintage dresses <3.
It’s all a ploy to make the rest of us feel guilty
about the forty hours we’ve pretended to read memos,
or that we turned the porch light off when we got home and refused
to go anywhere
ever
again.
…………¯\_(ツ)_/¯
LIFE MEANS SKYDIVING WITH YOUR FIANCE ( Love you, baby!)
or taking selfies at the Great Wall of China 😉
or whatever else rich, white people do for fun.
Traveling is sooooooo worth the money.
Look, Brenda, I, too, have fantasies of flying first class
to a country where I don’t even speak the language,
But I will have to go on one of those new, fancy diets
in which I consume zero calories for six months
just to afford the plane ticket.
Forty hours in front of a desk
equals one rent check.
You know, the price of not being homeless?
But my life still counts.
Even if all I’ve done for the past four hours
is scroll through Facebook and Tumblr on my phone.
Even if my throat burns
from the dry lectures I gave.
Even if I drool on the couch
in the middle of a rerun of Friends
at 8:30 at night and wake up tomorrow
to pack up another box of the calendar.
My life still counts.
Even if I had too many thoughts in my head
to take pictures of the leaves hurling themselves towards my windshield
like toy soldiers on a suicide mission.
And maybe that’s not the stuff
that is #blessed,
but it’s mine.
Taryn Miller has recently survived her first year teaching middle school and has started her second. Her poetry has been published in USRepresented and Eskimo Pie, amongst other publications.