Author: Olavia Kite

I’ve never been the best runner, nor the best dancer, nor the one who scores goals when playing soccer. In fact, I hate soccer. I love to run short distances at a great speed —sometimes —, but I’m bad at it. I do it for the sole pleasure of feeling the wind on my cheeks and the streets passing by like blurs as my feet barely touch the ground, even if it looks clumsy.

I wish I were graceful.

I’ve tried to be good at dancing, but all those boys with broken faces at the fancy sweet 15 birthday parties knew I was not made to dance. Ever since, everyone knows I cannot dance. I can sing, that’s all. And not even my music teacher at school had a lot of faith in me —he never let an alto sing solo after Paulina left the band.

I wish my feet moved at the right pace, I wish my hands knew where to go, how to sway, I wish my hips weren’t stiff, and the rhythm which invades my blood and brain did invade my joints too… but I walk and I stumble, my elbows hit the doorframes when I walk out from rooms. I seem to purse my face altogether and crouch to evade deadly balls which are not even flying close to me. I exasperate dance teachers.

Every day I find one more reason not to like myself. Every day I find a lost talent, or a talent I never did have, so why waste time on it, anyway. But even if I end up being as stupid and idle as I believe I am, I wish this mindless body had at least the ability to walk smoothly, to let my pale skin keep its original colors and not add splotches of green and purple here and there, to move around and not look like the creator of tsunamis or a human version of Godzilla and Gamera together. I wish this mindless body did not look ridiculous from the very moment it pulls itself out of the bed.

I don’t want to end up like that, falling asleep everywhere. Is there anything which will keep me awake? What must I do to open my eyes again and let the sunshine in?

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

—Elizabeth Bishop

And it’s clean and sweet and subtle.