Every night before I go to sleep

I turn in two job applications

for jobs I don’t want but need

to get jobs I think I might want

and maybe I’ll get to that position finally one day

thirty years down the line

and wish that I would have studied biology

geometry geography philanthropy psychology anthropology

anything but English.

The day I decided to major in English —

as if it was groundbreaking news —

I left my community college introductory writing course

having read only an excerpt of Paradise Lost

intent on revealing

some revolutionary information to my grandma (gma, that is.)

Mind you, she was the only person I ever knew to perch for

hours on end

on her red and beige floral recliner chair

and finish a (probably not that significant or even interesting)

novel in one day.

A fellow reader.

Anyways, I drove from class to tell gma and

in my excitement my mother interrupted with a call,

asking me to drive straight to gma’s (grandma’s, she said.)

Which, honestly, annoyed me, as if I weren’t already.

I hung up and five minutes later when I got to the end

(beginning) of the road leading home

(gmas was/is my home), I noticed a police officer waiting at the

blind corner of our cross street and though, finally, someone is

enforcing the speed limit

now I don’t have to worry about myself or my family getting

t-boned by speeding cars.

This was a selfish appreciation of their presence

in the right place at the right time, which reminded me to

remember

1. want to study english
2. cops at the corner because she would like that

So I continued on the road that I still know like etc back of my hand

drove up a hill down a hill around a corner and what not

through the opening of our white barnyard fence past the first

oak tree (gone now) past the second oak tree (still there)

underneath a third oak tree (cut down)

I already say my family at the first oak tree but only really saw

them —

all of the members I don’t know and subsequently don’t like

(Because they never cared to know me, and this is my house.)

I got out of my 2003 silver Saturn as my mom walked up to hug me

and, well,

long story short I fell to the asphalt in tears already down my neck

without a work spoken, as all of the family I dislike watched

and as gpa expected and my mother needed

me to be strong

but I missed my opportunity to tell the one person I wanted

needed to tell and expected to appreciate that I, too,

want to sit perched in a chair and read books for the rest of my life.

Just like she did.