Ironic that my daddy said the very same thing.

It is all up to you now, girl.

I did everything I could.

Put a roof over your head

and bread in your mouth.

Sent you to school.

Now do your thing.

Believe in yourself,

Dream BIG,

And be inspired.

Prove that you’re beautiful and smart.

Remember that smart is what counts.

(Counts if you want to go to college and hang with the smart crowd.

Counts if you want to get those scholarships

that everybody talks about

but nobody can tell you how to win them.)

Everyone just assumes

that because I pull good grades

that I am super confident about this college thing.

But cut me open and unravel the knots that define my stomach,

they’re wound so tight that sometimes I can hardly breathe.

Yeah, it’s up to me

not to be down about anything that upsets me,

anything that would affect my grades

or the way my teachers see me.

Gifted student

            Polite

        loves a challenge

              will adapt easily to college.

I try to remind myself

Keep your balance. You’ve come too far to mess it up now.

If it were truly up to me

I’d spend a week or two in Barcelona to try out my Spanish,

travel to Pamplona (not Chicago) and cheer for the bulls

“!Vivan los toros! ”

Just to give the crowd a buzz.

Yeah, I’d rewrite Langston Hughes.

I’d call mine Daughter to Dad

‘cause life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

‘cause I’ve been hammering at prejudice and seeing walls fall down.

And, I’ve been wondering if corporate glass ceilings are still hard to break.  

But I digress…

Yeah, lately I’ve been inspired to place my little brown self

at Brown or Yale or some such envied/ ivied place of higher learning

just because I’d like to and just because it would make my poor dad proud.

But mostly because I thirst deeply for knowledge,

the kind that would unravel those knots

and remind me that I am more than the sum of my parts.

I am much more than what I’ve learned

Or want to learn.

I have much to offer the world

and I can do anything I set my mind to.

Like my dad said

it’s really all up to me…

to Believe, to Dream, to be Inspired.