I guess this is growing up

All these people at interviews are like, "So, are you passionate about marketing/health policy/technical writing..." 

And I just sit across the table from them thinking, "I like flowers." 

I think about how I love this poem by Mary Oliver, and how I'd hate to sit at a desk all day while the sun is out, encouraging all the petals to unfurl their gentle sunsets, their egg-yolk centers, their spiny, sticky greens. I think about lawns sliced open by old men riding dilapidated lawn mowers, and the smell that trails them--oil and grass stains. I think of sunburns and flip-flop blisters and charred hot dogs on the grill.

I think about my to do list and the stack of bills that needs to be paid. "Yes, I am SO interested in insurance practices," I tell them. 

Poppies
Mary Oliver 

The poppies send up their
orange flares; swaying
in the wind, their congregations
are a levitation

of bright dust, of thin
and lacy leaves.
There isn't a place
in this world that doesn't

sooner or later drown
in the indigos of darkness,
but now, for a while,
the roughage

shines like a miracle
as it floats above everything
with its yellow hair.
Of course nothing stops the cold,

black, curved blade
from hooking forward—
of course
loss is the great lesson.

But I also say this: that light
is an invitation
to happiness,
and that happiness,

when it's done right,
is a kind of holiness,
palpable and redemptive.
Inside the bright fields,

touched by their rough and spongy gold,
I am washed and washed
in the river
of earthly delight—

and what are you going to do—
what can you do
about it—
deep, blue night?