Waves

I used to think my identity was born

in pools of absence:

a clumsy collage of an individual

made up of photographs

cut out

from magazines and

advertisments with glossy pages;

advice columns and self-help books, or

vision boards and manifestations -

a rambunctious prayer for everything I am not.

Scrappy or just scraps?

My face feels like it is disintegrating,

a papier mache mask falling apart after years

of hiding empty holes

where my vulnerability should be.

I used to offer up the

soft bits of myself

so easily,

those pale gleams of underbelly,

beg for exposed flesh to be

lapped up by velvet tongues,

wait for the serenade of approval

before the slap of reprimand.

I learned that anything I fell in love with

would eventually be ripped away,

that if I didn't dance the monkey's dance

or sing its song,

if I instead smashed my symbols and

ran

I would lose the privilege

of ever hearing the music.

I'm still learning to recognize my voice,

to find lullabies in the silence -

their notes cascade over me in ethereal,

unfamiliar sounds.

I am an engima to myself

and yet people keep telling me

I am open sheet music.

I wish I knew what songs

they were reading.

I'm still learning

to find the notes,

rhythmic dirge-singing,

art of the slow release:

how to tame a flood.

I linger in the current

let silver water splash over my legs,

bare, cold, shaking.

Pools of absence rush around me,

a lake

a labyrinth.