From The Photon

First Place Winner of the 2018 UMaine Poetry Slam

I can’t promise that this poem is going to be any good.

Odds are, it won’t be the one that you’ll say was your favorite,

or steal a quote from in your memoirs.

It won’t be analyzed in classrooms a hundred years from now,

or win a pulitzer. It might win honorable mention somewhere,

years from now, when this night doesn’t mean anything other than another Tuesday.

I get it. I’m not entirely unfamiliar with being last place.

That’s not the point of this poem.

But I’ve sat in that damp and lonely well for a long time,

my carvings are still there in the wall if you look hard enough.

Being insignificant gets boring sometimes.

Head down, eyes to the floor, calculated introversion,

only tuned to the beat of my own drum but I’m not a percussionist.

I’m a vocalist. I like having my voice be heard more than I like

homemade mac and cheese or 3am conversations,

or 3am conversations over mac and cheese; ‘cause that shit is divine.

If I stop this poem now, stop speaking, let silence accept my voice,

my words may not have the sticking power I hope they will.

And that’s terrifying. I can’t own silence. I can’t own nothing.

So instead, I imagine each word has its own wavelength

that projects and bounces off the walls like an infinite game of foosball.

Everything that passes through this space will absorb a photon of light that

allowed you to see my lips, my eyes, the sweat on my temple tonight, tomorrow.

You’ll be given a secret goodie bag graced with the vibrations of my voice.

I’ll sneak into your back pocket. Stick onto the bottom of your shoe.

Tuck me into the back of your shirt.

I’m the humidity in August that you can’t seem to escape.

I’ll cling on like cat hair to your favorite sweater.

Soon I’ll revolve around the earth as parts of me trickle into the atmosphere.

I don’t do this on purpose, but if I were you, I wouldn’t want me to stop either.

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