Balance

The balance is hard
On my feet, in my head
Between feeling you’re good enough,
and knowing you’re not.
Advice is complicated,
Where strangers and friends alike decide
For themselves
How they want to interpret your experiences
And beliefs
To suit their own optics, or
Suit yours

I back up for a moment in my thoughts
I want to be an accomplished writer
I want people to feel things when I do
So I write, edit, polish, submit
I’m reminded declines are natural
They are the wetness of the water
They are the stinging heat of the ice 
You have to experience them to experience them
A likely excuse
This pushes my balance to its corners
Believing my work is good enough
To submit
Yet feeling like a total failure
With every written word

You’re trying so hard to patiently wait
Until this poem is likely over
To quickly tell me that I’m wrong
Oh, the irony of my struggle
Because telling me so proves I’m not
I’m just expressing how I feel
I’m just expressing who I am
I’m often very hard to look at
Still you can’t seem to look away
I often say to myself
To myself.