Alex Carrigan
To Exist on Purpose
After Jessica Lawson's "Mine Map"
There is a privilege in not having to exist on purpose.
No prophecies were spoken of you at your birth.
Your birth brought no plagues, no murders,
no promises of conquests nor of heroic acts.
Your future acts were buried under concrete before
anyone could divine and draw a map to their location.
The location of where you were meant to go is divined
only by where you washed the concrete off your hands.
Your hands could choose what riddles you'd have answers
for, what routes would lead you to fountains filled with fortune.
Fortune has condemned your brothers and sisters to
labors and losses that you couldn't comprehend.
You couldn't comprehend that their fates couldn't be refused.
There is a privilege in not having to exist on purpose.
Bio
Alex Carrigan (he/him) is a Pushcart-nominated editor, poet, and critic from Alexandria, VA. He is the author
of Now Let's Get Brunch: A Collection of RuPaul's Drag Race Twitter Poetry (Querencia Press, 2023) and
May All Our Pain Be Champagne: A Collection of Real Housewives Twitter Poetry (Alien Buddha Press, 2022).
He has appeared in The Broadkill Review, Sage Cigarettes, Barrelhouse, Fifth Wheel Press, Cutbow Quarterly,
and more. Visit
carriganak.wordpress.com
or follow him on Twitter
@carriganak for more info.