Analysis of A piece on doubt
You know who you are.
Of course you do, you’ve always been you.
When you were young you never doubted this part of yourself, so, even if one of the alternatives seems more appealing, or even more accurate, it can’t be true.
You know who you are and you’ve always been- the same.
Maybe not with everything, people do change in some ways. When you were 5 you wanted to be a fairy. That’s changed. When you were 12 you had bangs, that’s changed.
But there’s some parts of you, that people say are so intrinsic and important that you keep that part of you with you as you grow up, it’s not just some accessory it is you.
And you grew up thinking you were straight.
The alternative never even made a guest appearance.
Sure, when you were 5 you wanted to kiss your best friend because hugs weren’t enough to show how much you loved her
And when you were 10 you spent a whole day panicking about wanting to kiss a different girl.
And when you were 11 you cooked a meal together and you thought you would be happy to marry her.
And when you were 12 you thought a girl had a crush on you. You were so happy. You decided you would say yes if she asked you out.
When you were 13 you wrote a love letter for English. You had to draft it addressed to She and Her, bc it felt more natural. Eventually switching the pronouns out for a simple "my love".
But you have alternative explanations for all of those.
They aren’t even alternative, they’re the original. The reconsideration of these events is new. It’s more of a reconstruction, a falsehood you built to believe a lie.
And you’re sitting on the floor between two rows of seats in the auditorium. You’re laughing with Kelsie who sits next to you.
She grabs your hand and turns it over
Just to hold it
She runs her fingers over yours
Twirls it as she talks to you
"You know I used to have a crush on you," She says
Giggling
And you can’t believe it
because you have a crush on her.
It’s obvious and clear as anything to you.
It’s secret and scary
And you tell her
"I used to have a crush on you"
The past tense makes it less scary,
less honest too
but that’s never been a problem with you
Her hand is still gliding around yours warm against your skin
The world feels like it’s building to something
Towards you being loved
In a way youve never considered possible
Towards loving someone
But the dream moves away
You wake up
That one’s only part fantasy.
In another world you could call the feelings you have for Kelsi a crush. You’ve had them since the day you met her 3 years ago, but in this world it’s not a crush.
It’s an "obsession" or at least that’s what you’ve always called it when there was a girl you wanted to always be around.
A girl you thought was so cool
And so good
Girls that made you feel alive
You felt that way about guys sometimes, to a lesser degree. But when it was a guy it was a crush, in this world. No air quotes. No doubt.
Anytime you even talked to a guy, it was a crush
The "obsessions" are weird, what kind of person has good friends and yet wishes they could hang out with someone else as well.
It’s a betrayal
What kind of person wants to be around someone else so much.
It feels like a cheat to file away a personal flaw as evidence of your love.
It feels like your scraping away parts of yourself to build a case.
You’re making it up.
You’re putting away music stands at school, but it’s late at night. The air is electric with the oddity of your situation . The disconnect between the time and your location.
But really it isn’t much, you’re just cleaning up.
And you aren’t even alone in the dark.
There’s another girl
you don’t know her well, but you know her.
She has long black hair, and deep brown eyes.
Eventually you both stop
settle between the music stands
cross legged on the floor.
You talk
And it’s nice
and easy in a way that talking rarely is for you.
The music stands above you
form a cozy canopy of warm darkness
You’re nervous as always but it doesn’t seem to halt the conversation
You’re holding hands
You’re worried it’ll end,
you’ll mess up and end it,
but it doesn’t. It’s simple and easy and-
She kisses your cheek.
So you kiss hers
You look at her and she’s smiling.
If you’re anything but gaping,
You probably are too or maybe you’re too shocked
And she kisses you
You both
kiss
It’s soft and pleasant and sweet
And it’s good
And then you wake up
And ok
Ok, you can’t be making this stuff up right?
It’s subconscious at this point
That must mean you like girls,
Right?
-but why do you want to like girls so much? Why do you want to be gay? Isn’t it weird? Doesn’t that prove you aren’t ? Just hoping to be?
You’re just bored. If you were gay you wouldn’t even question it! It wouldn’t be a puzzle.
You wouldn’t need to recall dreams and tint old memories. It would be first nature!
Lots of your friends are queer,
They don’t seem to struggle with it
they make easy jokes and causal conversation about it
It is first nature for them.
They know!
They talk about how they always knew!
They made their barbies kiss when they were little
They stared at the pretty girls on the screen
They just knew
If you were really queer like them
You would’ve known like they did
You didn’t!
So you must not have been!
And you must not be
You know who you are.
Even if you can imagine a world where
Straight wasn’t the default
And in that world you would’ve grown up certain you liked girls
This isn’t thag world
And in this world it barely feels like an option
You write a whole piece and can’t even face it with the word "I"
it feels too real.
Too true
Like a lie
because this piece implies that you are gay you’re just doubting it
That’s the natural conclusion of the narrative
at least you think so
And you don’t feel qualified to claim that.
You certainly don’t know who you are
Scheme | Abbx c b x x d e d f g x h b dixb xj idbkd b kbb l jxmn o p k q xxrx fq x m x g x p n pxedx xsxx xb bx ns xix x x jjx b xxxr p otxut k md xiivwb mxb vxclkA xxuxn hxbhixwx a |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11111 11111111 11011101011101110111001001101011011001111 11111011101 1011101011011110110110101111011111 1111111101110100010111111111111111110100111 011110101 001001010101010 1110110111110111011111110 01101101110001101101001 01101101010011111101100 011011011011110110110111111111 11011011011011111011100111110001000100101101011 11101000101111 1101001001001000000101101111110010011110101 01101010111110001001101111111 111101110 1111 11010101 1111111 111111011111 100 011011 01110110 11000111011 110010 0110 11110111 01111110 1101 1110101011 01111001110111 0111110110 011101 001110010100 01101 101101 111 11101100 0010111101011110111110111010110111101 110101111111111110111011101 0111111 011 1111101 111101101101001111101110101111111 1011011011101 001011111101110110111111111 10010 11110111011111 111011101010011100111 1111100111011101 11011 11001101111111101101010100110100001010101010 11011111101 01101001001 10101 111011110 111110111 01000111 10010101 110101 11 011 01000111010111 0101011 10101001110 110111111110010 1101 11011 111011 1111100100 11011 1110 11100110 1110110 110011110111 01101 11 1 1101001 011 01111 011 11111101111 1010111 111111 1 1111111111111111111111111011011 11111011110101111010 111111011100111110 111111 11111011 11101010010011 1111011 11 11011111 11110111010 1110101101 111 11010111 111111 11 111111 01111 11111 10111010011 11001 0011111110111 1111 001111011110 110110110111011 1111 11 101 011101111111101 1010001010100 11111 011110111 110011111 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 5,894 |
Words | 1,121 |
Sentences | 74 |
Stanzas | 54 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 4, 2, 5, 1, 3, 1, 4, 1, 1, 1, 1, 4, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 5, 4, 2, 2, 2, 3, 1, 1, 3, 1, 4, 1, 5, 1, 2, 6, 3, 6, 5, 8, 1 |
Lines Amount | 119 |
Letters per line (avg) | 38 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 84 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 21 |
About this poem
It’s about questioning, and yeah. Messy free verse. Some of its more prose than verse. I wrote it.
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"A piece on doubt" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 6 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/109309/a-piece-on-doubt>.
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