Special
The feeling that I’m not special
overtakes me more and more.
In her eighties, a movie star
writes a book called “ME!”
No question, she feels special.
A man I know tells me he’s dumped
his girl-friend of seven years.
“Imagine she wanted ME to marry her,
as if she were something special!”
When I make a date, friends expect me
to travel to a convenient place
for them. I do it once, twice, thrice.
When I balk, they say, “some other time.”
I guess they believe themselves to be special.
I know it’s not always a quid pro quo,
at least not with the same people.
What troubles me is that I am,
personally (or is it in the abstract?),
losing this feeling of feeling special.
Maybe it’s okay, maturity at last, or is it
What’s commonly perceived as getting old?
I arrive at the end of this cerebration,
feeling as if I’m at the bottom of a pit
out of which I must climb. I begin
to think of myself as part of nature,
perhaps recycled like sap traveling
up a giant sequoia, a chloroplast
trapping oxygen from the air.
But here I sit displacing space,
drinking coffee, craving cherries,
an itch at the top of my head.
Must think of ways to feel special,
(not all the time, not a lot).
Get rid of some of this maturity.
by Helen Tzagoloff
Helen Tzagoloff poems and short fiction have been published in Barrow Street, Poetry East, Poetry Lore, Blueline, Evansville Review and other journals and anthologies. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and was the winner of the Icarus International Literary Competition in honor of the Wright Brothers.
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