strictly pavlovian

i don't know what to say when i have to say something

about a universal experience

because i am small and don't know what the words universal experience mean

i am small and i only know about the immediate tragedy

of waking up soaked in sweat, discovering that i've run out of milk

and being baffled by an inability to recall my dreams

i want to be a painter, i want to be able to play music, i want to be able to say anything and have it mean anything, i want the world to be art relavent and moving

but instead i am small, i am only a girl, i only write poems on the backs of napkins when all the serious writers have those black leather books and those felt tipped pens

i am small, i am only a girl, i am still coloring with crayons and barely managing to stay inside the lines

there is this word potential and it is thrown around  like something cavalier, it is thrown around like he loves me not daisy petals, it is thrown around like a word worth throwing around and i don't understand

because i am small, there is me in one room and my potential in the other and it is like a lover who i've been arguing with over something trivial, like a lover who is now pouting with his lip stuck out and wounded, and me not knowing what to say to make things right again

there is me in one room and my potential in the other and the way that word is thrown around you'd think it was something important, but i am small, i am just a girl, and i only know about the immediate tragedy of not living to the fullest 

and there is that word again

and me not knowing what to say to convince the universe that i am.