The Santa Ana Literary Association will be presenting a new poem by a local poet every week this year. This week’s poem is “Waiting to Become” by Joseph Pedroza.

Waiting to Become

By Joseph Pedroza

There’s a wind inside my sails
That makes me grit my teeth
From behind it pushes me
Makes me think that I could fail
Eyes fixated on the end
Ignores the feeling in my legs
As if tornados could be angry
Or an angel could be sad
Dragging myself through cacti
When I could be skipping on the sand
Towards a neverending sunset
Breaking the chains of my past
If only I could release the wind
That pushes at my back
See potential in the lack
And find a calmer me
Sail through a lifelong ocean
Just to gaze out at the sea
Not to put it in a box
But just so I could be
Anything but just one thing
Perhaps no thing at all
And as I let this sink inside
A clench is born inside my jaw
As if some sort of cosmic law
I start to want it all to stop
And as I grit to make it gone
I see more grits have come along
So maybe that’s not it at all?
Perhaps my grits are just a song
A song I sing when I allow
Myself to feel like something’s wrong
And watch it form as if slow motion
The pain that forms when my emotions
Meet the walls of my distrust
Of all the ways my body must
Allow itself to move and feel
In order for to feel what’s real
And so these walls create a dam
And in my body there expands
A place where all my love is lost
And there it’s turned into a song
A song that says hey look at me
I’m dead in ways you cannot see
Please come help me back to life
I have a film over my eyes
It makes me think there’s only one
Or maybe two songs to be sung
And so I start to grit my teeth
As if the world is somehow mean
Cursing all the times I’ve hurt
Wearing all my hurt as shirts
Or even worse, more like a badge
Clinging to the worst I’ve had
As if it makes me more complete
The only song I let me sing
So if you see this inside me
If you have the sight to see
That I am caught on an endless loop
Of singing all about my poop
Please know this for this I’ve learned
That if you try to stop the song
I’ll only see the part that’s wrong
And try to make you go away
So that I could live a dying day
But if you start to sing your song
Without inviting me along
And if you hold and keep it true
If you only sing for you
Perhaps I’ll stop for just a moment
Maybe I’ll even let me show it
Show that I am mortified
And yet relieved at the same time
Mortified, because now it sees
This part of me, that makes me sing
It starts to see that I could stop
Stop the song that has me caught
And take the reins out of it’s hands
And give it to another man
The man in me that knows it’s time
To rebuild the trust he broke inside
It’s this distrust that sings the song
That sings of all the lies
Mortified because it knows
To face the truth would be to die
And so this fear must somehow be loved
This gift sent down from up above
This fear that tries to help and nurture
But only knows a world of fracture
This fear that loves me like a son
A soldier fighting for what is already won
I see that he’s what makes me grit
Makes me lie for my beliefs
It is not he who finds relief
In songs that only you can sing
But the man inside who so receives
The gritting of this noble hero
And multiplies the grit by zero
Relieved because he finally sees
That if you only sing of sorrow
You’ll see today, but not tomorrow
But if you sing of sorrow’s twin
Start to see all frowns as grins
Something will start happening
And instead of trying to say stop
You will simply start another song
One that sings of good and bad
Sings of loss so it could have
One that dies so it could live
Taking only for to give
And when you get to the last verse
After honoring all of your hurt
And all the truth inside the lies
Something starts to blur the lines
The lines that think they must divide
Divide the parts you thought were gone
The parts that sang all of your songs
“When this happens don’t resist,”
A voice inside my heart insists
“Just hold them closer to your chest
Until each part becomes the rest
And the sound of you becomes your voice”
And now I stand, emaciated
The fruit of good and evil tasted
Not to say that time was wasted
That I regret all of my gritting
It’s that now I see that there’s a choice
Between the grit and something fitting
Fitting for the love that’s sitting
Waiting to become.

Joseph Pedroza was born and raised in Santa Ana and graduated from Godinez High School. He has a degree in English a minor in Film from UCLA. He is currently in Nevada working on life coaching videos.