Writing

Never Too Late (Poem Version)

I visited my high school theater teacher,

browsing old show posters with borrowed nostalgia,

imagining how many star theater kids

were able to fulfill their dreams;

how many went for a BFA against their parents’ wishes?

how many went so far as to make the pilgrimage to New York,

as many hopefuls have before them?

 

I think of the theatrical people

who fill my life with love these days;

people who are dramatic,

both professionally and interpersonally.

The multitude of “theater kid dreams”

represented in Tuesday afternoon holding rooms

and Washington Heights apartments.

What were my dreams?

I had only one that sticks with me to this day:

To be conventional.

 

Conventional…

Normal

Stable

Comfortable

Predictable

Safe

 

I didn’t have to be taught to play small,

it has always come naturally;

even before my life was filled

with the biggest kind of personalities. 

 

Despite my tendency to crave the conventional,

two things have found me against my will,

both have denied me the comforting self-deception of thinking

playing small was the real me:

faith and art. 

 

At 16,

the illusion of control was baptized right out of me.

My smartass atheism

unable to breathe anymore.

Now, I breath in God:

divine inspiration.

 

At 21, 

embarrassed by my own creativity

and denying myself the dangerous artist’s life,

the curtain rose without my cue,

the lights illuminating that I’d always

been standing beneath a proscenium. 

After divine inspiration

comes a long-awaited exhale.

 

When art called,

there was no more room to play small. 

My desired life of comfort and stability

saw its name etched into stone

next to the grave marker of my long gone unbelief. 

 

He’d waited through my 

embarrassment

denial

and elusive strategies

for me to finally say,

“God, I’m an artist. Just like you.”

 

I’ve since realized

that it is wasted effort to continue

constructing my own veil.

The one already eternally torn is enough.

My truest presence

doesn’t need to be kept separate.

 

It’s never too late to admit that you long for something more than yourself.

It’s never too late to find a different dream.

It’s never too late to mourn,

or to dance.

It’s never too late to live loud and in color,

to be singular.

It’s never too late to be someone new,

especially if that “someone new” is actually just the real you.

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Creative Direction, Styling, and Painting by: Grace Copeland

Painting Titled: "The Old Me"

Photography: Rickie Poole

Written by Grace Copeland