did the work
did the thing
should i feel accomplished?

here’s the rub:
i know it could have gone better
(i know it could have gone worse)
but
it has become part of me
part of my mornings
(alongside my coffee)

and yeah, i guess i’ve learned a little
about myself
my words
my process(es)
my struggle-busses
(though i still feel so far away from having any of those
actually/totally ‘figured out’)

but does it have to mean anything?
does there have to be a large lesson learned
do our lives ever truly have
a beginning/middle/end
(except
birth/
the entirety of our lives/
death)
?

so,
i tell myself
from myself
to myself,
stop trying to make a neat story
where life just is
(that’s the fun thing about life:
it doesn’t get tied in a nice bow
at the end of every chapter;
it seeps
and bleeds
into every part of you;
your childhood
didn’t just cut off when you turned teen,
your teen-self didn’t stop teen-ing
when you entered college,
and with every passing year
you grow
but you can’t just let go
of who you once were,
you carry those stories
those strengths and faults
those likes and dislikes
those selves
with you
always,
they are part of what helped you get here;
you can’t have leaves without the branches,
and you can’t have branches without the trunk,
and you certainly can’t have a trunk without the roots
(and, if we’re comparing ourselves to trees now,
we might as well commit
and talk about how,
underneath,
supporting the roots themselves,
are mycelial networks
helping with nutrients
and
connecting trees to each other
and
living symbiotically,
so community
is the lesson learned there:
not even trees
stand solely alone)
)

so
i suppose
what i/this poem
are saying
is
this experiment might continue on for another year
or another five
or stop abruptly
just before another year mark
or i might not poem tomorrow

the point
is that i did it
i proved to myself
that i could do it
(though, with my stubbornness, i didn’t have too much doubt)
and i’ve written
(at least) one poem
every
single
day
for a year
and posted them
for the internet to see

and that’s all that matters
(right now, at least)