And Yet I’m Too Old to be a Prodigy

I remember running around in my prepubescent bones,

how words would fling out from my fingertips

and flutter across the page in

a flurry of infantile insight.

“It’s a cinch,” I said.

I could catch them in a jar.

I wish I had written the secret,

now that I’m confronted by the white of despair

and the buzz and the hum of adolescent inadequacy.