The waiting game begins

Today, after work, I mailed the very last piece of the very last grad school application. Throughout this process, I've spent $140 to take the GRE, $451 on application fees, roughly $20 in postage, almost $10 in printing (I did most of it for free at work), plus a package of manilla envelopes, some whiteout, a package of paperclips, and a ridiculous amount of time and energy. But now it is all out of my hands; my fate is out there in the hands of the universe and its infinite wisdom. I believe that it will give me the options I need to make a good decision.

And, because I haven't posted any poems recently, here is a very new first draft I scribbled out last night during the Open Mic. ETA: after reading this again a few times, I think it's really awful, and am deleting most of it. I'll leave the beginning and end, as a reminder to myself what it was about.

Hold On As Long As You Can (tentative title)

Ten years ago if my wishes had been granted
there would have been three: her,
California, grad school. I dreamed
last night that they’d all come true.

(removed stanzas)

... She was dying.
We both knew it. I walked outside

in the dream. It was snowing. Is this
still California, or have I gone back
in time to Ohio? I didn’t cry.
I’d gotten all I ever wanted and held
her all these years.

I wake and reach for her, who’s never been
in this apartment or this bed. Years have slipped
over me since the last time I thought of the life
we could have had. Tears fall suddenly as I grasp
the human truth. Even if I’d gotten everything
I wished for, I would still have lost her someday.

It's from a dream I had a week or so ago, which was truly creepy and sad and strange.