finals rip at your heart, don't they?

SO... during my first Final here at Berkeley, I was asked to write (for that extra credit, of course) a poem in a fashion similar to that of Sylvia Plath, describing the experience of taking the Final and completing it. For those of you who don't know, Plath didn't have the best relationship with her father. Actually, one of my favorite poems from her is "Daddy", check it if you haven't already...

In having this similarity with her, I ended up sitting there on the other side of school in the new building we were placed in specifically for finals, and thought about my less-than-spectacular father (sorry pops) at eight AM, and this is what came out: 

The years were long-

they held, they suffocated. Never honest.

Never far.

Towards this moment, they crept slowly

I left them the piece of me that was your name,

erasing its existence from my life

a protest of you when anyone desires to know who I am.

Who am I?

I am here, 

this Final comes first. It is my first Final.

I'm not there.

I answered the exam the only way I knew how, through the eyes of experience

and late, late, vacant nights

Answers far from the ones you fed me.



Was I frightened? If it were ten years ago, yes.

I was. 

I was asked to write a poem for an exam.

These words are the test.

This poem, this day.

I am through.

Still, you have an influence on me.

I continue to be tested, far from my days of hopelessness with you 

in my first exam at Berkeley, miles away-

I was asked to write a poem,

and you found a way to submerge yourself between its words.



Yet, you are threaded into a picture all my own- 

adding another year, another achievement along the lists

of where you failed and I succeeded.

This is the doctrine of myself.



Though the portrait of you remains-

Dad, in all that I am, your name is no where

to be found.