Perfection

This is a poem about trying and failing to be perfect.

Perfection


Perfection whispered in
Like a ghost
Hiding in the shadows.
Running, just ahead, out of reach.

I chased perfection.
I grabbed her and wrestled her to the ground.
But she was a whiff of smoke, nothing was there.
I flailed at the air.

With all my strength I determined,
I would capture her,
Pin her down,
Make her my prisoner,
She would make me worthy.

This was the aleph,
The sine qua non,
The value of my life.
How could there be any other way?

Who would be happy with contentment?
Proud of mediocrity?
So much meaning, so much straining, so much pain.
I had to let go
Of something I was never able to have.
And I broke with sadness.

To grieve something so damaging
Is a strange contradiction.
And in the defeat was an unexpected healing.
Revealing truth.

Truth was as strange as anything
I had every chased.
Seemingly, harsh, I had always run away.
But now I sat with truth and listened,
Opening calming pathways
To myself.