es mus sein was one of my yearbook quotes
It was so awful and loveably me.
I had read Kundera’s Unbearable Lightness of Being
and was impressed by a passage in which he riffs on it.

I wasn’t sure what it meant 
but was sure it was deep
terribly deep
and more important 
nobody else would know either

In the mot juste of es mus sein
the yearbook staff assigned to quotes
took my desire to be smarter than I was 
south of the border
and so under all the angsty things I wrote stands:
Es mus seino — It must be-o

Check out other work in the Practicing My Writerly Gaze series here.