A Benchmark Shock Poem by Margaret Alice Second

Today a benchmark shock in self-discovery
a colleague explained she read everything
on a subject she does not understand when
she has to translate a new text on it - feeling
terribly guilty I realised I cannot force myself
to do that, trying to overcome violent distaste
in anything that holds no appeal simply ends
in me being ill

I should have become a nun with my interest
in spiritual matters, by this time I would have
been feeling totally sinful, dead or locked up
in a hospital for the mentally ill, thus the world
would have been spared my presence and I
would have been enjoying my justly earned
suffering for multiple shortcomings - now I
am an anchor, a provider

Sending kids to college, gathering for pension
funds, I may not admit how much I detest trying
to do things in which I cannot excel - lacking the
emotional stability to do things for financial in-
crease - only able to survive in between texts
by reading fairytales and enacting them in my
life - if it were possible to volunteer for early
death due to guilt feelings

I would have been the first one on the list