My sweater

I have this sweater

that I hang on the wall

it is not to clothed me

but to remind me

of something I’d hope to achieve

if I didn’t give up trying.

This is a NYU sweater

the sweater of my dream school

I’ve always wanted to go there

Alas, I never applied there

I was always afraid

that I wasn’t good enough.

My counselor gave me a list

of schools that she picked

I applied to these schools

although I had no interest in

I blindly followed

what my counselor said.

Getting accepted to these schools

was not what I’d expected

it brought out bigger questions

the questions of “what if”

what if I applied to NYU?

what if I was accepted?

Living 13 miles from the Village*

I travelled down every week

my favorite cafes were there

I even visited NYU several times

The more I visited, the more I fell in love

Why do I always want things that I cannot have?

That feeling of never knowing

outweighed my chance of rejection

it made me realize that it’s worth a try

so I made my decision to transfer

If I did well academically, I’d have a fair shot

after all, a good GPA is usually a deal-breaker.

Sacrifices had to be made

No Xbox, no video games

textbooks and online tutorials came to my aid

and then came my finals

months of hard work and studying

I believed I was prepared.

Now you’ll be expecting

that this story has a happy ending

but no, I screwed up during finals

and now my GPA’s below a 3

my dreams of transferring, gone down the drain.

I’ve no one to blame but myself

I could use the excuse of being a foreign student

far from home, struggling with the culture shock

or I could explain the call I received, a week before my finals

the night I found out, that my mom has cancer

but that doesn’t solve anything- my GPA remains the same.

My story ends there, just like that

don’t expect a moral or a lesson learned

‘cos that’s just life

twisted and unexpected, like a double edge-blade

allowing us to dream the impossible

but killing it when reality sets in.

* the Village is more commonly referred as Greenwich Village, a neighborhood in New York City. It is also the neighborhood to New York University (NYU).