Saturation

Too much, too little, far and few between—

never feeling like enough was a patent curse.

It came and went like starfire, brushstrokes

all on this people-pleasing scene of mine.

"Yes" was the answer, always, without fail

because I didn't want to disappoint a whit.

I apologized for everything and anything—

the cloudy sky, the slow flow of conversation—

and my face would be mottled red in the cheeks,

the blush and my stammer so out of tune.

Even the rare photo—cameras made me shy—

would make me clip the thing away at once,

a "sorry" on my lips for ruining the moment.

They would tell me I had nothing to apologize for,

but I didn't believe them at all, not a single word,

because I'd been throwing sorries for my existence

since what felt like whole entire lifetimes ago.

Pink was my favorite color to weave in my thoughts,

but black was the one I wore to hide and disappear

from view, from thought, from anyone's little history.

I knew too little and too much all at once, a sign

that I could be an overachiever in overthinking,

the spill of words mounting and piling all the time.

Yet I'm still here, still thriving like a green weed

in a vast garden off to the side in this big wide world,

and sometimes I see other weeds struggling to survive—

wishing to soak up sunlight and grow and become—

so I bend a little, say "yes" a bit too much, talk them down,

because there's room enough for all of us to prosper here

on this little sphere rotating in a universe too vast to be charted.