Letting Go

The question asks, 

"If you could change one thing about yourself

What would it be?"

I take but a moment or two to think

 as the paper stares back with white space 

that, offering no advice to my untroubled mind, 

leads me to believe I'm content

I scribble something mundane and vaguely unsatisfactory, to get the mark.

Eight years pass as teachers and papers become artifacts

buried in my memory and covered in birth-dates and shift times 

and regret for failed expectations filling my ashtray

Like words and theorems falling 

from my atrophying vocabulary

into disuse