I am an ocean with no sea-life

                No fish nor aqua living creature

I am a boat empty with no crew aboard

                No one manning the sails, nor tending the amidship

I am a home with no tenant

                No living on grounds

I am a wandering stranger

                Held by painful ambition

                                I join a league of nations,

                                                Silent and still

                Drowning in a sea of school debt

I join the faceless, numberless horde

                Swamped with desire

Now,

                I am a woman

                                With tremendous soul

Flawed and faulty,

                I have been naïve and too trusting

I have loved many and been loved by less

                I am my own sword, sharp and fierce

I am new;

                With dents and cracks aglow

I am prisoner to fantasies of greatness

                Lashed amongst painful despair

I am a soldier with wounded ambition

                I am a woman, strong and willing

I am a survivor

                With matching scars

I am a daughter to many

                A friend to some

I am an outcast, a pariah:

                A loner, a misfit

                                With no true tribe

I may be all these

                But there is no doubt that I am also

My Dad’s daughter with shared hazel eye,

                Or my mother’s friend with black fading hair

I am true to my clan,

                With Gaelic beginning,

                                Te Deum laudamus!

I am a scholarly student

                An academic hungry to learn

It is neither here nor there what I have been

                Or what I have done

                                And what I presently feel

But rather,

I am eager to begin a brand new something

                With opportunities plenty!

I think I’ll start tomorrow!