Maybe it’s not a conspiracy.
Maybe there are no political ramifications
regarding your rejection.
Maybe it has nothing to do
with gender bias
or antisemitism
or your racial makeup
or the color coding on your files
or that you might be
one nineteenth Cree.

Maybe the way you see the world
is not the only way to see the world
and maybe your assumptions
about truth, justice
and the Amerindian Way
are not as one hundred three percent accurate
as you know them to be.

Maybe your twenty three years
of hard living in middle class
mid-sized cities
and your mid-sized degree
from a middling campus
has not prepared you
completely
for all the contingencies of life.

Maybe being a know-it-all
is not quite so charming as you think
and your rejection
is simply because you have made yourself
so darned rejectable.
Maybe there’s more to this
than you think.
Did you ever consider that?

No, you didn’t.
Of course not.