The World Has A Habit Of Saying No and Georgia Olivia Duke

By April McDermott

The World Has A Habit Of Saying No

The world has a habit of saying no.
Saying no to my dreams.
Saying no to all my great plans and schemes.

When I told this to my Papa,
He simply smiled and said,
"Maybe the world is actually saying yes instead.

"You see, the world has this habit of saying yes.
Yes to the right things for you.
Yes to all the great things you're supposed to do."

I thought about it for a long time.
Then re-evaluated my life.
Turns out there was always a good thing that came from my perceived strife.

When I thought the world said no to my dream job,
It actually said yes to a workplace,
Where I met my husband and walked down the aisle in a white dress of lace.

And when it said no to the happiness of pregnancy,
The world said yes to joy,
When we adopted and gave a good life to a lost, little boy.

So when I think the world is saying no,
When things don't go my way,
I remember my Papa, and listen to what the world is really trying to say.

Georgia Olivia Duke

On a rainy day when the world was gray,
Georgia Olivia Duke was born on a Sunday.
Surely as time passed and day turned to day,
Her eyes which were once so blue faded to gray.
She grew up just like any other kid,
Went to school, played sports, did what everyone else did.
They thought they all knew her because what was there to know,
She kept quiet, kept to herself, and kept her profile low.
She was known to be shy, not often found in crowds,
Usually not talking with people, but staring up at the clouds.
Nobody ever really knew what was on her mind,
For indeed she often thought the words to express herself were hard to find.
You see people knew her name, they knew her face,
They knew she existed and took up space.
And for most people, they thought that was enough,
They didn't need to know about any of that personal stuff.
But one day she came to a conclusion that made her feel small,
For no one truly knew anything about her at all.
She had grown so used to just being alone,
Because for years that was all she had ever really known.
Maybe people thought that was just how she wanted it to be,
But a future of solitude was never what she wanted to see.
Nobody had ever gotten close enough to see something was wrong.
Nobody knew any different when her silences grew too long.
At the end she found herself in the future she had always feared,
When no one noticed anything was missing at all after she disappeared.