Acceptance + Dust

I received a poetry acceptance yesterday! Obviously very excited, it feels like some amount of the writing muscle I’ve been building has paid off. It’s also in a great lil digital mag that I’ve fallen in love with called miniMAG. I don’t want to bask in the feeling of success for too long. Kat made a comment a while back that I come back too, she said she often can’t see a huge difference in the “first version” (it isn’t usually the first first version) of a poem I show her and the version I show her after I spend time editing. If she read the first version or the edited version of them could have been the first draft. The draft number doesn’t really matter. I think that probably comes down to trusting myself and the work I’m creating. Also recognizing that I know how to write. The poem that was accepted I only put through two rounds of revision. Other poems I’ve worked for over a year through I don’t know how many rounds and they can’t find a home. I guess ultimately when it hits it hits and that’s it. What’s important is to keep at it and try to trust.

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Everything is always getting dusty in our old dusty house. In some way the dust feels fitting for a home as old as ours. I find it hard to imagine a new home, no crooked corners or worn floors, being dusty. Surely they must get dusty but from where does their dust come from? Perhaps it is us who make the dust that settles onto the edges of desks and across the bases of floor lamps. Maybe there is part of us, an older part dragging behind, that brings with it dust as we move through our houses. With ever sweep of a rag or puff gust of air we blow away and forget what is no longer needed. Even we can’t recall what we needed dust for. Maybe the dust in the house is a sign we’re shedding away those old things we carried. Maybe dust shows that we’re growing. Maybe dust is not a sign of neglect or lazy housekeeping but that the inhabitants of the home are becoming grown in some new way and that is what is more important.