It took me 30 years, not 10, to really start finding myself again:
To drink my way toward sobriety,
To scream/snore my weekends toward balance,
To impulse-buy my closet toward a yard sale,
To sugar/grease my mouth toward a salad,
To brag my way down to humility,
To hate-rage forth my kindness,
To lie-twist my seams into “I’m not your dream,”
To slobber/tooth-clack toward a fine kiss,
To boob-job my chest toward acceptance,
To punch-kick the drywall toward tender,
To repeat-shout my views into “I love how you think!”
And gun-mount my towers to surrender.
It took me permanent injuries
To myself, to friends, to strangers…
To forgive my own hands, and your hands, for life's—sting;
To respect (more than fear) this world's dangers.
To end smooth
as skull bones
And soft
as old leather,
Complete
as a puzzle piece:
myself
altogether.
This poem stood out to me because it represents lessons and advice that ruminate within my mind amidst graduating high school and going forth to complete a new chapter of life. I believe that the poem serves as a testament to life’s obstacles and one’s ability to acknowledge their own faults and shortcomings and use them as lessons to learn from in order to improve one’s character. Reflecting back upon my own high school experience, learning about myself and my own imperfections came from a multitude of experiences involving trial and error. To me, maturing does not equate to the instantaneous ability to forgo bad habits or disagreeable tendencies, but is the capacity to acknowledge my own faults and work towards correcting them despite its challenges, which “Hide & Seek” encapsulates. The poem demonstrates this process of self-improvement, both in its structure and deliberate word choice. The space between the phrases acknowledging faults and improving upon them slowly decreases as the poem progresses, almost as if coming to a resolution that the foundation of character emanates from working towards the best version of ourselves, not an accomplishment of a goal. Using the word “toward” emphasizes this sense of an ongoing journey with an importance placed on betterment, not perfection. Connecting this poem to the stage of life I am in now allows me to find comfort in its guidance and grasp the idea that perfection is not what we should seek from ourselves and from life, but rather find comfort in acknowledging how our imperfections contribute to our identities through our abilities to recognize them and utilize them to make us better people.
ReplyDeleteThis poem stands out to me in many ways, however the title was the first thing that caught my eye. When I was a kid, hide-and-seek was one of my favorite games to play with friends, so the fact that there was a poem on this intrigued me. The way in which the poem is structured is very interesting as well. Instead of being written as a typical paragraph, the poem is divided into two columns, the second one curved inward and shaped like an arrow, which I thought was very creative because it symbolizes how life goes on despite all the punches it throws at you. When I read this poem, I felt myself nodding along to its words as I could relate to its theme: finding myself again. Kuntzman talks about how it took him 30 years instead of a decade to truly find himself again by combatting things such as screaming/snoring on weekends (towards balance), impulse-buying his closet (towards a yard sale), and sugar/greasing his mouth (towards a salad). This resonated with me because over my high school years, there have been so many times where I have just cried at the sheer amount of work that I have to do for school and extracurriculars. I related to the “screaming” on weekends and “snoring” as I barely got any sleep and was tired a lot, trying to find my balance or a time where I could relax and not worry. The impulse-buying for the closet also resonated with me because I love shopping, and it is quite easy for me to buy books in a bookstore or clothes from a brand that I like as I have little self-restraint. The impulse-buying to a yard sale made me laugh because I could relate it to my spending habits and made me think about saving money. Lastly, the sugar/greasing my mouth I could relate to because although I love savory food, I also like to indulge in some sweet treats and junk food occasionally, and the “toward a salad” really made me think back to how sometimes I deny foods because I think they are “unhealthy” for me which isn’t always the healthiest mindset. This poem made me reflect on ways I have coped throughout my life to reach towards a goal and the path to maturity I have gone through. To me, this poem embodied the process of personal growth and realizing that taking permanent injuries lead to the real version of you. Complete.
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