Dichotomy

I called it “The Dichotomy,”
not because I knew someone
had already used the title 
(that was after I wrote what I wrote)
but because I loved the word— 
the way it tore itself apart
just by me saying it, and that is what 
I wanted to say in that essay.
Except I couldn’t. So instead,
I told a story. And I am positive 
the judges thought me a maniac
(now, I would be flagged
as a threat) but to me, it just made
symbolic sense, a boy and a girl 

with parents always fighting,
one wearing a shirt with a donkey,
the other with an elephant, 
each adult with their own distinct 
features, but both with prominent 
jawlines and extraordinarily big mouths. 

And in the story, the children 
heard every day the clamor 
of forks, and spoons, and curses
being thrown around the kitchen
against the backdrop of constant
bickering, and while I cannot recall
specifics (I was only a high school
junior) I knew it took me all session
to reach a catastrophic conclusion. 
And just as the AP teacher told me 

I needed to hurry, I scratched my final lines—
that in a show of desperate horror, 
those quiet children snuck out of their beds 
one night. They crept into the kitchen, 
as their parents did, so many other times, 
and went to the draw for two steak knives.
They headed towards the parents’ bedroom
where they could hear them snoring. 
And that is how it ended. And later,

I asked the teacher what she had thought,
and she said she was disappointed. Only a few 
of her students had been among those chosen
to compete for the college scholarship.
Except I hadn’t submitted an essay. 
And I left the classroom, myself a little
disappointed, thinking maybe she wasn’t 
the rebel I once believed she was, that just  
because someone white wears kurtas and hippie 
beads and sports a 1980’s Afro and rants 
how soldiers from Viet Nam were shipped
home from the government, in bodybags 
(I still hear her outrage as she said this,
see how her own thin mouth contorted)
didn’t mean she’d know much about rebellion,

how much courage it takes to take the smallest 
step against powerful winds of what’s considered
normal—when abnormal is not is nearly as colorful.
How choosing to write fiction (as dystopian as it was) 
and using metaphor in place of exposition—why would 
that not be brave? And it was then that told me, 
in that AP English class, that I had no place

in college. So I turned down a different scholarship
(to my poor mother’s sadness and angst), moved out 
a year later, and worked until more disillusioned. 
Because what the world had taught me one more time
was there was no room left for storytellers, for part-time 
poets, wannabe philosophers, ice cream servers or secretaries. 
That I could not afford independence anymore than I could
a classroom full of geniuses. And so I had to choose both—
working full-time, taking classes full-time—and I financed 
away my future. But what I want to tell the children of now

is it does not take knives or beads, or money 
to change a stupid viral universe, that it only takes
creativity. But I would not want to lie, or insult
their innocence, or kill what survives inside them.
So instead, I will hand them invisible pencils, a blue book
with wide lines, and erasers. I will sit them down 
in a comfortable chair and point to a stack of notebooks. 
Here, children, is what I will tell them. Say what you need to,
and use whatever words you want. There is plenty of paper, 
there are long enough tips, and a sharpener or two. No hurry, 
don’t rush, and write in the margins. Take all the time you deserve. 

Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt, copyright March 11, 2024, all rights reserved