Robyn Swannack

What if you woke up one day and realized you were mediocre.

Some half-baked version of the greatness you aspire to be.
Some worthless wannabe who walks upon airs, raised stilts in an empty theatre. Only you shouting with heightened diction.
Just another poor artist. Just another pretentious poet.
Just some loner who was never given enough attention, and now basks in the artistic glory of being “different.” But what you really mean is “better.”
Better because of what? You’re syntactical superiority? Your imperial intelligence?

You carry such ambition in that well-worn basket. Where are the others? I don’t know.

Should I care?

Look at you. You’re lazy. Pathetic. You’re ryhmes are nonsensical, you’re meter doesn’t match. Jesus, the comma splices. The run-on sentences that drag on for an eternity, draining the reader of that once-natural love of literature, as you sit back, pleased, at this “masterful” creation, or whatever you call it.

Fragments. abused Capitalization for only the purpose of so-called importance. Justification because you’re a writer or a painter or a poet or singer or the generic term of “artist.”
The ever-insinuating remarks that i am an artist and therefore i am better than you.

But really. Really. You were just fooling yourself. Really, you’re yet another desperate person risking absurdity, putting everything on the line to stamp their name into history.
Really, you’re just like everyone else. You’re normal. Common. Average.Typical. Plain. Bland. Mediocre.

And there’s nothing worse than spending your entire life believing you are destined for greatness, only to realize that everyone else thinks so too. Making you just like them. A copy. A sham.

I am currently sitting in front one of the gigantic computers in UCT’s special collectors’ library. I have all these extremely old books next to me and I am wearing a special white glove to prevent the damage for these books. Instead of reading them and add the quotations to my History essay about the Boers in the nineteenth century, I am sitting here typing this. It’s just those moments when I’m completely blanked out and just wants to write something occurs in my mind instead of writing something I am being forced to. This computer is so big, I have to turn my head from left to right every time I read. It is ridiculous that many things in UCT are so expensive, when there are other options which are exactly the same but much much cheaper… This is completely reasonable. Student’s fees are ridiculously expensive here, which explains it all. Thank god for scholarships. Looking at those other students in front of me, some hands are typing furiously while others are typing like a mouse. Focusing on their varsity work, I could see tense in every student’s bodies. Studying to be successful. Studying to make their families proud. Failing or passing, it doesn’t matter. As long you’re at varsity, you’re already “successful” and making something good out of your life. That’s why I am here, I guess. Being the first profoundly Deaf student here at UCT is also another reason why I’m here. To show that Deaf children can access to universities no matter what. The only problem is the Deaf education is shitty in South Africa. My mother escaped the idea of putting me in Deaf schools here in SA, we moved to Australia to gain a better education for me which worked wonders.

I used to dream teaching Deaf children, with a proper system, looking at them succeeding, like I was when I was little. But it’s not my dream anymore; I intend to be an architect. I know that the old dream could change many Deaf children lives, and I would love to help, but my real passion is to be an architect. It sounds awful, I know. It is not my job to do so, there is someone out there in SA who could do this and I’ll love to help out. But me helping thousands of children? I just don’t see myself doing that anymore. It’s not a real job.

All the time I think I can never love you more than I already do. And then you do something or say something, and I love you more than ever. Like just now. Like now. How is it possible? Can you love someone more and more and at the same time, all the time, love them as much as it’s possible to love someone?

I melt into the velvet of your words. Slowly sliding through the curves of every noun that passes through my tongue. I siphon every strength to keep my balance in tact. To keep my feet flat against the ground. As I read my way, through you. But as I read on by, I am morphing. I am becoming the wind you imagined on April spring. I am becoming the odd sunny rain on June. I am becoming the cold winter nights that held you close on silent Motel rooms. I am becoming the melancholia of your dreams.I am becoming the words you create, the lucid sabotage echoing how much I am attracted to you. And of the many reasons, I am inferior to your grace. How I can never stand my ground beside you without crumbling to the sound of your voice. How I could never stop my urge to picture your breath against my neck, without closing my eyes when you laugh. How I could never stop reading you out loud repeatedly, without you becoming a part of who I am and everything I could never be. 

In a fuzzy fate you’ve reached the point, the point to claim your life as your life—though you’ve settled today just to plan the next move, resourceless and cold never happy with the now. Drawn out like a graphic novel; shaken and blurred like undried paint, undried ink—ink you beg to be forever moist, forever undecided so the wind may blow it in any direction. This is you: frame-by-frame worried and sad and excited in anticipation rising high and falling low trying to figure out how you’ll feel the next second so to embrace it. To be what is happening to you; to be here-not-there—the perilous there. Somewhere there’s a window filled with a smiling face fresh to greet you. Its discovery marks the end of repetition, repetition like a prison like a trap you can’t get out of but you will. You do. Be open not closed: something is coming, something is going to happen—for you; and I shall be there when it does.

I walk alone on the road of success,
I walk alone in the crowd
When there are so many people walking with me,
I walk alone on road of success,

I walk alone on this road,
People do walk with me but till an extent,
I walk alone on this road of love,
Where I know, I have to walk on roses and thorns,

I walk alone, but I know I am not alone,
Everyone leaved me alone in this journey
In an effort to get people to look
into each other’s eyes more.

As I walk through the empty streets
Cars lay empty, void of life
But nothing looks back
Just an inanimate person
That has no life

I cross the vast lands
Of this once vibrant earth
On this University road
But all is the same.

Every day I walk on the Unviersity Road, I read everybody’s minds while they walk past me, “is that the Deaf girl?”