Diana Darby ** "I V" ** Intravenous

SuperWoman

I don’t know when I learned to fear my own greatness
but I do.
Somewhere along the way I learned to keep my head down low
and my voice silent,
and to disappear into the cracks as much as possible.
I learned that if they can’t see you,
You can’t get hurt.
But that’s a lie.
I get hurt everyday
and I’m sick of it.
Hell,
I’m the one who fixed the flapper in the toilet yesterday.
Just slid it right on
like I’d been doing it all my life.
One quick tutorial from the guy at Home Depot
and I was a regular seventy-five dollar-an-hour
minus-the-butt-crack plumber.
It was easy,
just like he said it would be.
But for two days I was forced to use the toilet in the back bedroom.
For two days I debated calling a plumber.
For two days I was lost.
After I fixed it I wondered what the big fuss was all about.
And it got me thinking,
if I can do that, I can do other things.
In fact, I can do most anything
I decide to do.
After all,
I’m the one who walked in Warner Bros.
and got put on staff out of a couple thousand people.
I’m the one who had my first album on NPR.
I’m the one who had a ninety-nine percent voter turnout in the precincts I managed in Clinton’s campaign of ’92.
It’s time to start that novel.
It’s time to make that film.
It’s time to finish that album
and publish my poetry,
and take that trip to Africa.
It’s time to remember just how amazing I am.