I GUESS THIS IS WHAT I’VE SPENT MY LIFE DOING — Lucy Biederman

“My generation”
Isn’t something to say anymore
For me. For me. A better generation

Bloomed out below
I hate them
They delight older people

Older as in my age
Who will I delight

I guess it’s too late
I guess it’s too late
I guess it’s too late

To be young and obnoxious
The voice of my apartment complex

It’s painful to see their wonderful fingers on the pulse
What they do in an instant takes me years

Taking a walk or cutting an onion for dinner for my husband
For twenty years
No, dinner’s not ready, stop asking

You’ll know when it’s ready
I’m not going to forget to tell you. And yet—

I forgot to write a memoir
I forgot to write a script on spec
I forgot to become a feminist rock star

The Velvet Underground kind of rock star
Where you don’t play any instruments
I haven’t even learned how to not play guitar

I watched the light fade from the autumn sky
I thought it would take half an hour, tops
But I made a horrible miscalculation

It took up my entire life. My entire life
All I did was look at the sun
Now I’ll never go to Hollywood like Didion and Dunne


***


Lucy Biederman is a lecturer in English at Case Western Reserve University. She holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Louisiana-Lafayette and an MFA in creative writing from George Mason University. Her first book, The Walmart Book of the Dead, won the 2017 Vine Leaves Press Vignette Award. Her short stories, essays, and poems have appeared recently in wigleaf, AGNI, and Bat City Review.