Poems for Feeling Like You’re Not Good Enough

THE JOURNAL · WORTH & PRESSURE

For the quiet verdict that shows up when no one is watching.

It usually comes when the room is quiet. The day is done, or nearly, and some part of the mind starts reading back the record — the thing you said, the thing you didn’t, the way someone else seemed to manage it more easily. The feeling that you are not good enough rarely arrives as a thought you can argue with. It arrives as a verdict, already decided, in a voice that sounds a lot like your own.

These are seven short poems for that feeling. They will not tell you the verdict is wrong, and they will not hand you a better one to keep instead. They only sit down next to it for a minute — the way a person who doesn’t try to fix you is sometimes the easiest person to be near. Read one. Leave the rest for another day.

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One — The Three A.M. Verdict

The voice that grades you at three a.m.
is tired too.
It is reading from an old page
in a dark room.
You do not have to take it down
as the final word.

Two — The Comparison

You are measuring your inside
against the outside of someone else.
You only ever see their finished part.
You are standing very close
to your own unfinished one.
The distance is the trick of where you stand.

Three — The Apology You Didn’t Send

There is an apology in your drafts
for a thing that may not need one.
The reflex to explain yourself
came before the wrong did.
You can let it sit there, unsent,
and the night will not collect on it.

Four — The Ledger

You keep a running tally
of what you owe and never paid.
The column for what you gave
stays blank, not because it’s empty —
only because you never thought
to write it down.

Five — The Thing You Did Fine

There was a thing today you did fine.
It passed without a note.
The mind keeps no record
of the ordinary done well —
only the small slip,
played back in a slower light.

Six — Setting the Measure Down

For a minute, set the measuring stick
against the wall.
You do not have to weigh yourself
to be allowed to sit down.
The chair holds you the same
either way.

Seven — Nothing to Hand In Tonight

No one is collecting the work tonight.
There is nothing due on a dark stair,
no one in the hall with a clipboard.
Let the hands stop their counting.
The day asked plenty of them already.
This part, you can spend just being here.

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None of these poems is trying to win the argument with the part of you that keeps score. They are quieter than that — small notes left beside the feeling, not arguments against it. If the verdict comes back tomorrow, the page will still be here, and so will the chair. Read one slowly, and let it stand in for the answer you were trying to reach.

If the not-enough feeling is sitting heavier than a few quiet lines can hold, it is okay to reach for a real person, too — a friend, or someone whose work this is. A poem can keep you company; it was never meant to do all of the carrying.

A note from the Library: these poems do not try to settle the question of your worth. They only keep you company while it is loud. — Zen Roots, published by Ledgerstone Press.

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