I’ll be graduating from the University of Connecticut in 10 days. Oh my god. What else is there to say? I’m living in a state that fluctuates between denial and anxiety. Where have the past 4 years gone? What am I going to do with my life? How am I going to pay back my student loans?

Needless to say, I’ve been putting off answering  these questions until the last possible second. Instead, I’ve been doing a lot of reading. No, none of my reading has answered these questions, but it has helped to get my mind off my current situation. During my avoidance of the real world through reading, I stumbled upon a poem titled “Pairs of Shoes” and liked it so much that I figured I would share it here.

“Pairs of Shoes

My future lives come to me in dreams
Come silently with torn soles.
I am like a skilled shoemaker
Greeting the wandering breath of these feet.

These dreams-my other selves
Sprawl out to sleep like a litter of puppies,
Pinches of ashy fur standing up in tufts
Their young hair like hens fluffed feathers
They lie on their stomachs, pressing against my shadow.

Pairs of shoes from yesterday will come tomorrow
Am I their native land, or a land foreign to them?
Their house, or an inn?
Which road guided them to me?

Tonight I decide to open myself to these dreams,
As anxious for their arrival as a child yearning for milk.
Perhaps fireflies will draw them in a different direction
And perhaps the shoes are no longer ripped.

I feel as empty as a new-born creature.
I spread out like a homeless evening
To meet these footprints turning toward me.”

-Nguyen Quyen

Congratulations to the class of 2011, may you stretch out to meet your “future footprints” and find the answers to life’s uncertainty.