I have a secret, a quiet one. But I can’t tell my friend Lea or my mom and certainly not my boyfriend. I don’t think even my dad would understand. Or maybe I don’t want to tell because they would look at me funny.
The other day, while browsing in a used bookstore, I found a book of the letters of the painter Vincent van Gogh. I felt like he was a friend talking to me. In one letter, he wrote that people see him as the lowest of the low: “I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart.” His words were so beautiful and honest they made me cry.
No one labels me as an eccentric, but that’s because they don’t know what’s in my heart. I keep it close.
I live in a town of engineers who worship math and science, and think solving for x gives insight into the soul.
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I want to be a poet.