NOTHING will ever be good enough.

Teachers compliment me on things I've written,

telling me that the power of my words

are so GREAT that I should bring them to Mr. Obama, himself.

Yet I still sit here,

trying to figure out more words I can stain the page with

in depressing black ink,

others that I’ll break free from this very line…

because great is not perfect!

“Why are you acting like this?”,

“Stop being such a grade grubber?”

“Why are there dinosaurs on your hat?”

phrases like these….

simple phrases like these,

that would fly over a NORMAL persons jar of emotions,

make me feel like each syllable

can strike a new bullet into my caged body

able to shatter my very being.

I will TRY to make it perfect,

so each flaw is hidden by a cape of pure fraud...

until eventually,  I’ll give up

I don’t want to feel the tears form in the corner of my eye

when I get a B on a test

I don’t want to have to read a line

over and over and over

just to make sure it sounds right.

Perfection feels non- existent

like the star in the night

that you stretch your hand to grab.

It is so close, yet so far away,

but you will always reach for that star

because maybe one day, it might work,

the perfect star is impound through the aviary of your fingers.

When I tell people about my perfectionism,

they tell me to get over it…

I have been this way

since I was two

and would make sure every crayon was in the box

in the exact same spot from the day I opened it.

Before I pried the perfect clear blanket of wrapping off

and dulled each crayon to nothingness.

No matter how much I tried

it would never be as perfect as it was that first day.

Perfectionism holds the rope
attached to my ego
and he’s pulling me down,
farther and farther into his world that is
destroying me.

I can’t help but feel like a failure because

I don’t have every little dynamic of my marching band music memorized.

I can’t help but feel like a failure because

I didn’t do a picture-perfect pirouette the day of championships.

I can’t help but feel like a failure because

I didn’t do that damn laundry

since I spent too much time perfecting a

stupid 2 point homework assignment...

for the 5th time this week.

And yet I sit here,
writing draft after draft
fixing each and every word
each and every phrase
on a poem that will never be perfect to me.