"Competition"

In honor of National Poetry Month, I have shared work by myself each Friday. I leave you with a new poem, "Competition." It was David Sarnoff who said "Competition brings out the best in products and the worst in people."

Competition

I don’t want to go back to
all the times I was blind,
to disappear like a ghost,
to be exhausted but
pretty on the inside,
to taste the world
in a sweet poison.
What if one day
it plays on repeat,
over and over,
what if the answer is now
and they never heard the question,
the one about what time it is,
always the same time,
because they never heard the question.
I imagine walking away from it all.
Will I miss it tomorrow?
Next year?
Ten years?
I’m not interested in
competing with anyone.
I never was.

©JEF 2022