I was never supposed to be anything.

If you had charted the stars at my birth,

You’d have an absence because I was

                  Born in the after-

Noon. You wouldn’t see anything in the

Clear blue sky, and even less if it were cloudy.

Maybe I am what I was supposed to be then

If by absence you could concede that I am

Defined by the negative spaces, and that

Everything is a negative space. This is

Too vague, much like that memory where

I am punished by sleeping on a bare mattress

With no blanket and my cousin’s forbidden

From joining me. It was around Christmas,

                        I believe,

And we were in a trailer. But it was only

Texas, so the cold couldn’t have been that

Bad.

I believe that last line, or word, is referred to

As an orphan, because orphans have no past

They just are, and I’ll try not to do it again.

In fact I usually try not to do it ever as I have

A displaced conscious and care more about

The toys I throw across the room in rage than

The cousins I slap in anger. Which is sad but

                                                               True.

That last line, or word, has no name I believe,

But I see it as an infertile woman. I’m not sure

If that’s better or worse than being an orphan,

But I feel less guilty about it, if anything I am

Balancing

                The scales.

                                  I should have been a

Libra, but was a month premature. This

Slighted destiny (it feels very self-serving

To use my own name in a poem, but it was

In use before it was my name and is in use

Now, which, I wonder, means that I’m

Used?) is also evident in my indecision:

I can’t for my life tell you what I want,

Because I don’t know what I want.

I’ve been taught not to want, as well

As how to not want. I would have said

                                    “Want not,”

                          But that would

Have been a lie.

We all want for something, whether

We want anything or not.