This is the only poem of mine that has ever been published. It was published in North Carolina State’s annual design and literature publication, the Windhover. I can’t recall now which year. I met a beautiful girl around that time with a resilient, uncanny spirit who was an EMT and as I asked her questions about her profession I realized quickly how little I knew about the urgency of life. The frailty of life.

What did I really know at all.

This beautiful girl is still resilient and uncanny and she is still out there saving lives everyday. I don’t see or talk to her as much as I would like, but she’s still making a difference in my life. She taught me that existential dilemmas are complete bullshit, even when they do mean something. She taught me that living life means more than understanding life. There are some things that will never make sense. She taught me about moving forward, cherishing the people you have and what you have, and that what you have is always more than you would ever want to lose.

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Why Rabbits Have Holes
They could not resuscitate Mrs. Peachtree.
“It was too late,” the paramedic said, her face
young, but drawn like the flat shade of a window blind,
her eyes down, never up, and when she walked away
her partner whispered to me that it was her first time.

The steps it took to my house around the block,
the ones I had never bothered to count; the trees,
saplings that were younger than me; the gnomes,
grimacing and waving, frozen elf hats in the headwind,
the back of my unzipped jacket ballooned like a paratrooper’s chute.

I left my window open when I sat down in my room
and opened my notebook to an empty page
and I could only think of

Nothing.