This is what she is Dec. 9, 2013

  

Her four-line follow-up post continues the theme she started with her poem about casting the first stone, in which she tells herself (or someone else) that she should not judge herself as harshly as she has, and she is what she is, even if she is trapped in a life she had not intended.

And she must keep on keeping on until she decides not to do it any more, taking as much as she can get from it before it comes to an end.

What this means about the world in which she lives is hard to say.

But this latest poem is a definitive statement, and could possibly mean that she has no intention of reforming, or even altering the path that is almost certain to bring her doom, and possibly still struggles with self doubt, self accusation and her tendency to continue to trickle up, even though it is clear there is no room at the top for her.

How her life changes after this is unclear.

Does she move on?

Or does she settle into some new facet of her current situation?

Is she still viable to the powers that be?

Over whom does she still exert control – in our office, in her office, in the world in general?

Does she have any influence over her boss (F) or the Virgin Mayor that she can broker into a rebirth?

Perhaps, I’m reading all these tea leaves wrong, and she still believes she can salvage what she already has, not yet needing to abandon the whole existence the way she has in the past.

Will she slide out of the shell she has been living in for the last couple of years and into a new one that no one will immediately recognize?

The feeling I get is that what she has she has and that she will get on with her life for a logn as she can before she comes to a point where she can no longer operate, with or without regrets, but – if the tea leaves are right – not with any great hope for the future.

These two poems seem to connect with the idea that she has lived her as she has despite her conscience, and as with the fair/unfair poem, she is selling the idea that she has to operate in the manner she does because the world is dead set against her. But to her credit, she has struggled with it, and only now has come to the point of setting her conscience aside (to stop beating herself up) if she expects to survive.

email to Al Sullivan