Performed at Lincoln High School’s annual slam poetry competition, then at Verslandia, Portland’s youth slam poetry championship, won 4th place, April 2024

Video of performance

Humans love things.
They give things for birthdays, anniversaries, marriage, divorce, births, deaths, moving in, moving out, and everything in between.
Humans use things to assign identity to themselves, 
and when they can’t bear to part with them, 
they put them in car trunks, boxes under the bed, 
their childhood bedroom, spaces where the thing is still theirs but out of sight.

Humans need certain things: toothpaste, shoes, doorknobs, 
but when was the last time a human looked at all six seasons of I Love Lucy on VHS tape and thought, 
“This, this will come in handy?”

Humans clean things, 
and when they are too tired to do so, 
they ask other humans to clean the things 
in exchange for little green things to get more things.

Humans eat things. 
If they don’t eat things, they become a thing for things to eat. 
Some things are sweet; some things are not. Some make humans throw up other things. 

Humans hate things. 
They will argue with each other over the hated thing and throw things and slam things. 
Here’s the thing: 
humans like to do their own thing, even when that means doing the wrong thing.

Humans love things. 
They leave them at each other’s graves and 
count them until they fall asleep and 
write thousand-page books on them. 

Humans can become a thing, and when they leave each other, 
it’s a whole thing.

Everything has its place in this thing,
but I’m still trying to find my thing.
Everyone’s telling me that it’s just one of those things you’re supposed to know,
like how good things come to those who wait and there’s no such thing as a stupid question,
but I’m lost.

Everyone’s telling me that I’m this bright, young thing,
but at the ripe old age of seventeen,
I’m just getting into the swing of things.
You could tell me a thing or two about… a thing or two
but I still wouldn’t know what the thing to do!
Humans love-I… I love things, but…
maybe it’s just one of those things.