I Don’t Know What I’m Waiting For by Dustin Triplett

"Red Phone" © Kirrie Rodgers

The adjunct position never materialized

and hiring managers look at my resume

like it was a ransom note written in crayon.

Rejection emails arrive with automated sympathy

that sounds like doors closing in a house I’ll never own.

Student loan calls at eight in the morning,

ringing through to voicemail where a recorded voice

explains my options as if describing a terminal diagnosis.

Each semester a small mortgage and each textbook a car payment,

a checkpoint on a map to somewhere I can't seem to reach.

I tried the high road they said would lead to a salary

that wouldn't make me wince when I checked my bank balance.

But my automobile of flesh is breaking down somewhere

between between dreams sold to me and the harsh daily reality

when I open my laptop to search for jobs I'm overqualified

and underqualified for simultaneously, like some quantum state

of professional inadequacy that Schrödinger never theorized.

And you can say that it's my fault,

that I should have known better, should have

learned a trade, should have been born into a different decade

when a degree meant something, when debt was manageable,

when entry-level actually meant entry-level

and not five years of experience required.

But I didn’t start the fire.

I didn't create a system where education costs

what a house used to cost, where starter jobs

require master's degrees yet pay minimum wage,

where the promise of social mobility through education

became a bait-and-switch so elaborate

it would be impressive if it weren't so devastating.

I didn't start this fire but I'm the one burning.

Maybe I will reincarnate as a born-rich predator instead of the prey.

I can sell them dreams by packing hope into loans I'd never have to repay,

profiting from desperation instead of embodying it.

The system rewards the soulless and I had the audacity

to believe in something, to play by rules written by people

who never intended to follow them.

My integrity didn't build character—it built nothing but ash.

Their cruelty built empires and I want to see it burnt to the ground.

Dustin Triplett is a writer and narrative designer based in St. Louis, Missouri. His work has appeared in literary journals including ONE ART, The Modern Artist, The Ghastling, and The Morgue Magazine. He writes fiction and poetry that often explore grief, labor, love, and the strange architecture of being alive.

POET'S SONG CHOICE: High Road - Cursing