A Sour Goodbye
a poem
Dear friend,
I really wanted to be there
alongside you
cheering you on
in your achievements.
I really wanted to be there
to agree that all the things you’ve done,
because they’re all amazing!!!
I really wanted to be there
without having to lose myself
by silencing the harassment
(or at best, cold shoulders)
I’ve received from the people
you so celebrate as lovely, supportive people.
People who have snipped my wings
and told me that I could never be
because my tone of my voice
is both too warm and too cold,
that I’m both too meticulous and
not meticulous enough.
I am a champion for feedback
but when feedback wobbles
without consistency,
or when feedback falls on
assumptions leaning into
my gender and ethnicity,
like
“People like you must have a hard time
with this grammar rule”,
when the reason I suck at grammar
is the same reason the next
millennial sucks as grammar —
that we’d abandoned teaching…
