Original

I’m an unoriginal being, I’ve always known.

I knew the first time I found a poem for the unsayable way I’d been feeling.
I knew again when I read a book, and someone said something I thought only I’d been shown. Then I’d look at the date: from a hundred years ago…

I’m an unoriginal being, I’ve always known.

A child in feeling for the first time, but life was bitter and yawned indifferently at my woes.
It’s been done.
It’s been felt.
All this has happened before.

But if the world were truly hopeless, what did it gain by saying the same thing over and over and over again?
When has repetition ever gained anything?

If I were hopeless, I wouldn’t be writing.
If I didn’t think there was a solution, I wouldn’t keep coming back to words.

And so I hope it is with living.
That we come back to life because there is still something left unlived.
A stone yearning to be turned.
A problem wanting to be figured.
There are still words anticipating their own release for a story that plays out differently than the rest.

There is a chance, still, at being original.