Poet cannot answer a simple question; goes overboard

Maybe my greatest teacher has been every teenage boy

Who told me he loved me.

Gave me kisses at school, held my hand in between classes

And then

Late at night

Asked me for pictures of myself without a shirt on.

Maybe my greatest teacher has been

Every time I’ve ever cried.

Showing myself

Every step of the way

Life is not easy.

Maybe my greatest teacher is my tired mother

The one who is pulled in so many different directions she never has a moment for herself

The one who cannot stop giving

Who laughs when the doctor tells her the only way her body will heal is if she sits down, for 5 minutes.

She says “it’s not an option.”

Maybe my greatest teacher has been

Everyone who ever told me who I am.

They see me better than I see myself, of course

But also,

Not all of me.

Not like I do.

Maybe, my greatest teacher has been the trees

That I love

So dearly

The ones that grow tall, and strong

The ones that need fire

To release their seedlings

To let them have new growth.

Maybe my greatest teacher

Is a piece of paper

Blank, at first,

But it can never stay that way

Because the potential is the prettiest part about it.  

Maybe my greatest teacher is the mirror

The reflection

The girl who stares back at me

Maybe my greatest teacher is

My anger

But not anger, not really, more like,

Upsetness with the world, dissatisfaction with how we live

And maybe, my greatest teacher

Is the fact that I don’t get angry

Too scared of angry men to imagine that much hatred pooling in my stomach myself

And maybe, it’s none of these, at all.

Maybe, I'm missing the point.

Maybe my greatest teacher

Is myself, all of the above wrapped up in one

These slivers, and chunks,

These incorrect puzzle pieces that don’t line up

I do not know who I was yesterday

Anymore than I know who I’ll be tomorrow

But the greatest part of life is the learning

And the becoming

And so, and so I’m wrong.

The prettiest part of the piece of paper is not the potential.

It’s watching the blankness be filled.

Watching your thoughts and words come to life, to make something

I am making

Myself

All of the time

And everyone and everything else

Helping me, becoming part of me

Thoughts

And ideas and

Disappointments and inside jokes and broken hearts

And friendships is all

Who I have become

And are becoming

And will become

I’m just a patchwork quilt

I am everything and nothing

And that is because of the everything and nothing that surrounds me

So I do not have, a greatest teacher

No single entity, has shaped me towards success

But I

Have to admit

That the clearest guidance I have ever received

Is from myself

Late at night

After everything has gone wrong and I have to rebuild myself again.