Arib Khan is a sophomore and an International Relations major.
I wrote this poem thinking I was writing about failure. A failure that was inevitable. But instead I just ended up writing a poem about excuses. It has always been easier to say that something is impossible. I wrote a poem on why we feel the need to come up with excuses. And how comforting it is to tell ourselves that we were just never enough.
Not good enough.
By Arib Khan
I’m just not good enough.
Not good enough.
Not good enough.
Not good enough.
Not smart enough.
Not strong enough.
Not big enough.
Not clever enough.
Not good enough.
But I didn’t catch a cold.
My car didn’t break down and
I didn’t get into a
wreck. I didn’t get
robbed or shot or stabbed or
beat up or mugged.
My phone didn’t
die, I didn’t
lose connection.
The phone lines didn’t
break and fall and
splinter onto the
curb.
A hurricane didn’t pass by,
or an earthquake or
tornado,
wrecking me and you and
our tiny lives and
tiny homes and tiny
bedrooms.
The Mojave didn’t
eat LA in a coat of
dust and spit
Hollywood into the
Pacific.
Godzilla didn’t come
and no meteors crashed.
The Messiah wasn’t found and
God didn’t send any
new books or
prophets or angels or
revelations.
Nor a flood nor a swarm of
locusts.
There were no frogs in our
water.
Worse than all of that,
we were
too late.
Took too
long.
Waited.
Waited for nothing.
For
nothing.
Not smart enough, or
not strong enough, or
not big enough, or
not clever enough.
Not good enough,
is just what we say,
so we never
have to think
about what
could have
been.