What is deserved?
A poem about deservedness, legacy, self examination.
What is deserved?
I mull this idea over, break down the word
“deserve” between my teeth
like dessert after dinner
Do I deserve the waves lapsing on the shore?
The stack of books on my nightstand I have yet to read?
The stretch marks on his shoulders that look like
the shimmering reflections of light on a pool?
There are days I am consumed by my deservedness
and the way the world gets in the way
I think of my father’s back pain
and the scars from surgery on his knees
Over 40 years in the same car factory
For his suffering and mine I deserve to go to college
To be the first Gilchrist to call herself a writer
To say that my words are my living
My hands tired and sore from holding a pen
and nothing else
My grandmother bought herself a tractor
back when women couldn’t buy much of anything
couldn’t own anything, no deeds in their name
For the decades that have passed I deserve to rent
my own apartment
To take my car to the mechanics and get a fair price
I should be able to stand in a place amongst men
and not feel like prey
Most days I feel like I am a good person
When I call my sister on the phone, and
watch a movie about following your dreams, and
pick my roommate up from the airport, and
tell a joke that makes people laugh
I feel like I deserve to be happy
Some nights I lie awake and pick the crumbs of the word
“deserve” out from between my teeth
I have been kind just as I have been mean
Just as selfish as selfless
Placing my heart on the scale not knowing
what weight is on the other side
A test to pass the time
Do I deserve the walls around me?
The bed I’m lying in?
A love uninterrupted by untimely death or divorce?
It seems that’s never been done before
not in my line, not where I come from
Who am I to be the first?
I may or may not deserve everything, anything
my own self and still a culmination of all those
who endured this before me
but I’m going to take what I can get