The Existential Seven-year Old

My name is nugget.

Today I feel like a burnt chicken nugget.

Sometimes I am a food.

Sometimes I am a dinosaur.

But always I am small.

I ask the world, “Can I be big?”

And the answer is, “No.”

This is the most existentialist poem you will read today by 7-year-old Zekey Pie.

He used a poetry writing prompt from Joseph Fasano during home school today.

The poem captures the existential crisis of the “small” child contending against The Absurd, the hostile world denying the child his wish to be “big.”—Resident Captain

*****

I took a literature class in college in which we read Albert Camus, “The Stranger,” among other existentialist writings. We had to write a final paper, which I struggled over. I took a walk around campus, wishing that it was a paper over children’s literature or fairy tales, which would have been easier for me to write.

Then I had a brilliant idea- I would make it about children because they are the ultimate being without control over their lives. I wrote an explanation of my great idea and then finished my paper off with an attempt at writing an existentialist fairy tale. The fairy tale was terrible and I knew it. My professor agreed, but liked my idea so much that he gave me a good grade on the paper. Zekey Pie’s seven-year-old poem achieved what I could not achieve at 22.

❤ GlowWorm