LITMIR.BIZ

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shoes, I took a sip of my hot chocolate and listened. The guy’s voice trembled and his hands shook, but it was hard to tell if it was from nerves or because of the subject of his poem.

      “It was like a knife of white heat

      Plunged into my chest

      Exploding in a myriad of pain and anger.

      Like a long lost letter unopened,

      Its pages waiting to bring

      A sudden dawning;

      To complete a puzzle that once

      Had been so difficult

      For a little boy to understand.

      The realization is consuming in its accompanied rage.

      Does he know what he did?

      A little boy suffers as another

      Parades his falsities

      To an audience of jesters.

      His teardrops fall

      Among the court of

      Villains and victims,

      Whilst another’s falls silently

      Behind his eyes and down

      Over his broken heart.”

      As much as I loved being at Pan, soaking in the good and the bad poetry and the fact that you could be a purple elephant in this room and no one would care, I could never dream of getting up on that stage and reading my own poetry aloud. It was only upon visiting the café that I’d discovered something depressing. Apparently, I belonged to a group of poets that had fallen out of fashion.

      A poet whose poetry rhymed.

      The only poets here who rhymed were the spoken word artists—those who wrote slam poetry.

      I wasn’t a spoken word artist.

      And the only other kind of poet I’d come across in Pan were the free verse poets. Maybe rhyming wasn’t cool anymore. I was a lover of Robert Burns, William Blake and John Donne. I loved rhyming. I loved the challenge of it. But I knew that a lot of people thought rhyme felt forced and that poets shouldn’t be constrained by it.

      Being in the minority didn’t give me a lot of confidence in my work. Pan was the one place where no one made me feel abnormal. I did not want to put myself in the position of being judged by a crowd of people I admired.

      Shoving my worries aside, I lost myself in other people’s thoughts, emotions and imaginations. The poetry café was another escape. The surrealism of the venue, with its murals and tie-dyed fabric billowing across the ceiling like a canopy, made it feel as if I had walked into a dream. Here, I was in a bubble in the same way I was when I cracked open a book. Yet, it was different because I was alone without really being alone. I was surrounded by real live people who liked the bubble just as much as I did.

      “Comet?”

      The familiar voice made me tense.

      No.

      This wasn’t happening.

      Not here, where I was perfectly anonymous.

      My inability to be disrespectful to the owner of the voice made me look over my shoulder and up. Sure enough, Mr. Stone stood behind me with a cup of coffee in hand and the leather satchel he wore that was always bursting with papers slung over his shoulder. His smile was curious as he stepped toward me. “Do you come here a lot, Comet?”

      I nodded. And since when did you start coming here?

      As if he’d heard my unspoken thought he said, “A friend recommended this place. I usually do my marking at school but I fancied a change of scenery. Do you perform?” He gestured to the stage.

      I shook my head.

      “Do you have material you could perform?”

      My heart rate increased at the inquisition. I knew Mr. Stone didn’t mean it as an inquisition, but the intrusion upon a part of my life I kept private unsettled me. “Maybe.”

      He gave me a knowing nod. “You should think about performing. Your poetry assignments are stellar. You’re talented. You intend to go to university, yes?”

      I nodded again.

      “Well, universities look at your outside interests and passions. Lots of kids have good grades. You’ll need something that stands out. Performing here regularly would be a start.” He smiled at me again, clearly waiting for a response.

      I didn’t know how to respond. My palms were sweating and I was feeling cornered. Thankfully, someone else stepped onstage and Mr. Stone leaned over to whisper, “I’ll leave you to it. But think about it, Comet.”

      “Thanks, Mr. Stone,” I whispered.

      But inside I was yelling at my favorite teacher for pointing out something I’d been doing my best to ignore. That my excellent grades weren’t a guarantee of admission into the University of Virginia, and that a university such as it was would be looking for students who stood out among the crowd. Mr. Stone was right. Being a part of Pan, gathering the courage to tread the stage here, was just an example of what it would take to make it into UVA and flourish there if I got in.

      I couldn’t just sit passively by in the audience.

      Yet I wanted to.

      For the first time, I couldn’t just enjoy myself at Pan. Instead I imagined myself finally being brave enough to get up there and perform. Of being brave enough to remove the anonymity from my blog and use it as part of my application process for university.

      Yet, I didn’t make a move to do anything. I was stuck. Courage wasn’t something you found at the bottom of a hot chocolate or in a few words of encouragement from your favorite teacher. Courage was clearly something I needed to find, but how was I supposed to when there was a big part of me that didn’t mind the fact I hadn’t discovered it?

      Going to UVA was the biggest goal I had in my life. If I wanted it that badly...surely something would have to give?

      THE FRAGILE ORDINARYSAMANTHA YOUNG

       6

      Shakespeare said it best,

      To thine own self be true.

      To his wisdom, I attest,

      So I’ll be me, you be you.

      —CC

      How the hell did I end up here?

      I had asked myself that question maybe thirty times from the moment we’d arrived at Jordan Hall’s friend’s party. The party was in a flat less than a minute from my house and from what I could tell was rented out by four students. The flat’s windows looked out over the sea and from the noise blaring from the speakers in the sitting room I was surprised it hadn’t been shut down by the neighbors downstairs yet. Everyone here was college age or older, and I felt like a kid as I stood in the corner of the room, nursing a can of soda.

      I wasn’t oblivious to the looks being thrown my way, and it was making me nervous.

      It was a rare occasion when I was uncertain of my wardrobe choices, but tonight I was. I stood out from this art crowd, who all wore a surprising amount of black for supposedly creative people. Tonight, I was wearing above-the-knee-length bright yellow socks, an oversize blue tartan shirt dress with a large slouchy black belt around my hips, a black boyfriend cardigan with a brooch shaped like a yellow teacup pinned to it and a pair of patent blue-and-white striped Irregular Choice ankle boots. They had an oversize blue bow on the side, but what made them really different, was the fact that the heel wasn’t conventional—it was a mini-sculpture of Alice from Disney’s Alice in Wonderland.

      My parents might not pay me a lot of attention but they gave me a generous

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