How to Want by Trevor Neil White

I should’ve drank more in college.

That knowledge sobered me, ironically,

acknowledging the only thing standing

between me and making brothers or lovers

was losing the prudish delusion that if I just kept soda in my Solo

and shortcuts to short stories on my desktop,

I could thumb my French nose at those vapid upchucker-class prats

and emerge the right-brained victor.

I always had more to say, anyway,

with a carefully planned paragraph

than a flip cup-adjacent conversation

or morning-after, mid-network handshake.

But prose was invariably a fractal battle

with adjectives: grasping for how best to describe

a given mountain, sunbeam, or smirk, ‘til nodding off before the monitor.

Taking the path of least persistence, then—

vice versatile—I’d fall

for the romance of no plans,

guilty of the crime of comfort

amongst CDs, processed snacks, and the false sense of accomplishment

that comes from bobbing along at a rock show

or gripping an AMC armrest.

The ringing in my ears was only figurative, initially,

but I suppose it was only a matter of time

‘til my fury had a sound.

It’s been six years since I was despondent

by default, but it’s an enviable mentality

in hindsight, the adrenaline of the end—

because sticking around means accepting it

falls on me to build this world, and I fear

I’m left holding fallow dirt and brittle wood.

The momentum of silence

carried me through my twenties,

safe but not sound in a cycle of finals,

performance reviews, and a pandemic

which at least let the extroverts know how it feels

to not want anyone within six feet of you.

Now, I’m as old as my father was

with a house, spouse, and two kids,

while all I got’s a cat and a flat I only have

to switch wall sockets once to vacuum.

There's only so much I can do,

so much I can be,

and I can feel the world closing in around me

like a salmon trap.

I don’t want to dream in the past tense anymore;

I’ve got to look for ways to bring time to life, not kill it,

to let my Kierkegaard down

and keep the brightly bleak out of mind’s reach.

And yet, beer in one hand and phone in the other, I still look around

and wish I was the kind of guy anyone at this gala found interesting.

I take pride in my disappearance, then,

rewrapping myself in a chrysalis of indifference

as I find the emptiest alley or coldest overpass on which to flow home,

because people are like glass grenades:

prone to explode if tripped, but oh-so transparent

when the bar is open and profiles aren’t private.

I stopped drawing around when no one expected me to

write my name and date in the corner of a three-ring sheet.

Still, strolling downtown galleries, coveting the abstract

vernacular of a pale pink canvas or glass-blown octopi,

I think of legacies like art:

We don’t disappear at death, we flatten out,

and whether we leave a stain or a painting

depends on the ink we mixed in life.

So I don’t identify as Buddhist, but

I need you to translate your expectations

because, for all my roaming, ambition’s still Greek to me.

Tell me what I ought to want

to be as known and nurtured as you,

and phrase it so I don’t just think I’m following orders,

because I never met a tyrant I didn’t hate.

And I don’t identify as Communist but,

as the protest goes: I don’t aspire to labor.

My dream job isn’t CEO or POTUS but, I guess…

professional chocolate-eater,

or Jennifer Connelly’s ottoman.

That, and I’m scared of who I’ll become if I let myself

do what I know I should: put pedal to the mettle

I’ve cast in a mold of old expectations and new obligations.

An asthmatic athlete, I’ve got all the drive and means

but no air in me, because questions are a burning burden

and obligations are like gravity:

dragging the same, no matter the weight.

In another time, another place,

I might’ve become all I said I would by now,

but if life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans

then, in hindsight, I’m defined by eating spaghetti alone

with the shades drawn and thinking myself a scholar for it.

I still found new cares and causes along the way—

I’m not saying I don’t still strive to be a writer,

a musician, a self-directed muse.

But even atheists need faith, and so sometimes

the mere promise of passion is sufficient

to make it through another day with a pissed-off Inbox

and a mixer which ends with learning

another knockout in Doc Martens and horror pins is spoken for,

because folks like that

like folks like that,

and even though my sallow hands are more wrinkle than knuckle

of late, I’m still not sure what kind of folk I am.

I’m not where I want to be,

but in spite of my sparkling impersonality,

I’m closer than I’ve ever been.

I’m just more afraid of my mind tomorrow than the world today,

so look both ways before you cross it

because, for the longest time, I didn’t want anything

to push me—not liquor, not NASDAQ,

not church or state or the expectations of Boomers

who emptied the well and then spit on Millennials

for not making it rain.

But, fuck, it’s got to be something,

because otherwise, arising from that senseless abyss of sleep

which is our truest nature,

I realize I’m just the Big Bang fiddling with itself,

and I can’t even complain about it

without sounding like Neil deGrasse Tyson.

We all got here, this way, because

someone wanted something.

Maybe, before I leave, you can tell me

what your something is.

I promise, if I copy,

I’ll write my name all the same,

and I’ll take all the blame

if it doesn’t work out.