POEM: The Absurdity of Expectations

I said hello.

They decided I was too much.

I said nothing.

They wondered why I was cold.

I stayed.

I lacked courage.

I left.

I lacked commitment.

I loved.

I was needy.

I withdrew.

I was cold as ice.

I explained.

I was making excuses.

I stopped explaining.

I wasn't communicating.

I worked harder.

I was trying too hard.

I rested.

I didn't care enough.

I set a boundary.

I was selfish.

I sacrificed.

I had no self-respect.

I succeeded.

I intimidated people.

I failed.

I disappointed them.

I forgave.

I was weak.

I remembered.

I couldn't let things go.

Somewhere in the middle of all this,

someone handed me a map.

Someone else handed me a broken compass.

Someone else informed me
the destination had changed.

The map was outdated.

The compass was falling apart.

The roads had been renamed.

I searched for the correct map.

The correct words.

A working compass.

The correct tone.

The correct amount of effort.

The correct amount of distance.

The correct amount of love.

The correct amount of self.

Every answer generated the wrong results.

Every door opened only half way.

Every hallway ended at a help desk.

Every help desk was occupied by an AI administrator made entirely of policies and liability concerns.

And a mouth of zeros and ones.

Contact another department.

Please retain this notice for your records.

The records could not be located.

I began to suspect

that reality was less than real

and more a title.

Life was real. Life was a tide.

People arrived.

People left.

Feelings changed names.

Promises weathered.

Certainties dissolved.

Where one body of water ended and another started was debatable.

The shoreline moved while being measured.

Maps were always approximations.

The poles moved.

The sea never once agreed to hold still.

That was the joke all along.

The expectation.

If I did everything correctly, life would finally make sense and things would work out.

The reality:

a wash of waves,

taking footprints,

returning broken shells,

erasing instructions,

ignoring rules,

and continuing toward the horizon
without explanation.

I stand there now,

holding a map that no longer matches the coast,

smiling.

Not because I understand.

Because I finally don't need to.

Call me a quitter mom. I’ve finally stopped caring.

The tide was never wrong.

The map was never right.

And the ocean

has never once filled out the paperwork.

Life in the classroom life in the board room life in a book life on TV had been a lie.

Life had never filled out paperwork.
It didn’t follow a script.

That was for hospitals taxes funeral homes movie houses.

Humanity’s relics are file cabinets after a tidal wave.

Life is anything

but formulaic.