William Michaelian

Poems, Notes, and Drawings

Tag Archive for ‘Individuality’

An Awakened Outlook

Something I wish I’d learned during my growing up years, and that had been stressed above all at home and in school, is the importance not of proving myself as an individual, but of embracing and cultivating my natural talents in a spirit of contribution and cooperation. Instead, I was caught up in the cult of individuality, wherein I mistakenly equated self-worth with accomplishment on the dead-end terms of a […]

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Each the Other

and this is the world in the form of a map mountains are knuckles and nations are blotches of failed pigment and this is my skin and that is where rivers run * I really do forget the drawings, and the poems. I call this a blessing — to be surprised, upon finding them later, and to feel almost as if they were done by someone else, as, in a […]

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In Another Life

The storm’s over, the sun’s returned, and you’re the last snowflake to fall. When you land, the other snowflakes are already melting. And you think, In another life, I might have been rain. * Your eyes, looking back at you in wonder from the still water of a shimmering pond, and you, not noticing, as you comb your hair in front of the mirror. * I, me, mine — we […]

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