Sunday Sprinkle: How The Dictionary Discouraged Me

How the Dictionary Discouraged Me

My lack of vocabulary has me discouraged.

Maybe I should have stuck to reading the dictionary that day

as an aspiring 8-year-old wanting to know everything about the world.

I didn’t even get through A.

Maybe I got discouraged.

Or maybe I had gymnastics practice to get to.

Now I wonder what eloquent words I can use in my poetry

because I am discouraged thinking my poems about puppy love,

immature boys, bars, and my broken heart won’t be good enough.

Now they’re really going to think I’m a beauty queen.

I’ve heard you can’t let rejection letters discourage you

and that it means you are one step closer to getting published.

22-years-old and I barely know an inkling of the world,

but I still have the 8-year-old aspirations to know everything I possibly can.

It’s when I think about all the books I still haven’t read, the songs I haven’t listened to,

and the movies I haven’t seen that I get discouraged again. The world is so big.

It’s all about time and what I do with it, really, though.

All this time I have been writing this poem,

I could have looked up synonyms for discouraged in the thesaurus,

which would give this poem flavor, but instead,

I chose to use [discouraged] as a motif.

Did you catch any alliteration earlier? Hmm.

…So maybe I have learned something since being 8-years-old.

Things a dictionary certainly couldn’t teach.

When I wasn’t reading the dictionary, I was experiencing things.

Things I can write about in the first place.

The dictionary won’t read my poetry anyway.

It’s you that I need to relate to.

I can go to the dictionary for help if I need it.

What I need is to continue living life.

You know, that doesn’t sound discouraging.
More like the antonym: inspiring