�How still it is!� she whispered. �How still!�
Then she waited a moment and listened at the stillness. The robin, who had flown to his treetop, was still as all the rest. He did not even flutter his wings; he sat without stirring, and looked at Mary.
�No wonder it is still,� she whispered again. �I am the first person who has spoken in here for ten years.�
So, I don't know if I'm actually going to do this...chances are, there's no one left to read this thing. But I'm feeling sentimental, and I actually remembered my password, so what the hell?
It hasn't really been ten years, of course. But it's pretty much exactly six, and oh so much has happened. I have this little diary my parents bought me when I was six years old. It's tiny and pink and has a Cabbage Patch Kid on the cover. I wrote in it for a little while, and then I moved on to other diaries. But every couple of years, since I was in high school or so, I've written an entry in the Cabbage Patch diary. It's a record of everywhere I've been, and everyone I've been, too. So I'm kind of addicted to the epilogue, I guess you could say.
So let's see--In April of 2006 I was a month away from graduating, finally, from an undergrad degree that took an awfully long time. I graduated magna cum laude in May 2006 from Montclair, and I moved back in with my parents. There was a fair bit of depression going on at having this shiny new BA and no job prospects. I sat around feeling sorry for myself for about six months, and then I went to work as a receptionist for a doctor's office.
I started applying to MFA programs not long after that. I got rejected my first time through. And then the second time through, I got accepted to an MFA program. And I got funding. And I moved to West Virginia, and spent three years writing poems and teaching composition to cranky freshmen, and it was glorious. Well, mostly glorious. And then in 2011 I graduated.
And I moved halfway across the damn country, and started a PhD program in Mississippi, which is where I am now, writing poetry and teaching composition to cranky freshmen. And I love it. Well, I mostly love it. And I'm doing all right. I'm broke, and I'm just getting over the stomach flu, and I have to be up at 6:00 tomorrow morning to teach cranky freshmen, but I'm doing what I've wanted to do since I was sixteen years old, so I guess it all evens out.
And there's going to be a chapbook this summer, coming out from dancing girl press ! So that's a good thing.
And guys, if you're still reading this, I'm doing OK. I really, really am. And it's wonderful.
I may come back. I may not. But I thought you'd like to know, if you're curious, whatever happened to the person who used to be beatpoetgrrl.
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