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I don’t like to take up space,
even if that means waiting in line at a grocery store. I am a meandering silhouette, webbing in and out of aisles. I pinch raspberries to feel alive, the red juice staining my fingertips, reminding me I too am squished inside the sardine can of civilization. Watching everyone steer their monotone shopping carts, there’s a lot you can tell about someone based on what they consume. I do not carry a cart to be noticed. Instead I carry bags on each shoulder. Wanting more only makes things heavier, both in the bag and, seemingly, in my life. What I consume, what I dare to dream to consume, stays hidden behind the wall of my tote bag I got from a time in my life when I felt more like myself. But it’s just a grocery store. I know it’s me, afraid of being perceived, as if everyone is looking at me, pointing out everything that is, was, or will be wrong with me. Anxiety is a self-centered poison, inflating my existence beyond its true size. After all, I am just a woman pressing on avocados to find the ripest ones, choosing soy milk because of something she read online, walking past Reese’s peanut butter cups, debating whether today will be the day she finally gives in. Waiting on line at the grocery store feels like purgatory, until it’s time to gather my things quickly, like a feral creature, and retreat back to my den. Perhaps one day I will take a cart and place a single Reese’s pack inside it. Maybe then I’ll give people something to look at.
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The seams of my soul split apart
like an orange peel, Patience ebbing, I gnaw at the leathery skin with my teeth, Desperate, yearning to free the fruit from its flesh. Bitter citrus morsels paint my tongue with the ghost of sweetness. Swollen glands of juice still hiding behind thick white fibers. This journey toward the center has taken me a long time. Fragrant threads of residue stick to my skin as my body carves through the wedges like a knife. I just need to see the center with my own eyes. Some say there’s a magic woman who grants wishes with a tap of her fingernails, a box that cannot be opened but contains everything you’ve ever wanted, a vial of orange juice ambrosia that, when rubbed in the eyes, heals you. These stories have ripened so deeply within my psyche that I know only this orange can save me. I’ve made it to the amber flesh-wall, the only thing keeping me from the center. I press my face against its soft body, hoping to hear something on the other side. For a moment, I could hear a rattle-- no, maybe a hiss, maybe a hum of the magic woman? I push one of my hands through the membrane, my body follows as if being soaked like water into a sponge. I’m at the edge of something, but there’s nothing that I can see. It’s a void. Still holding onto the membrane, I dangle a leg into the abyss. Nothing. The center was supposed to be this place of divine conclusion. Once you made it, everything would make sense, everything would reveal itself, Everything would-- Sitting inside the table of my chicken-leg psyche,
I imagined sharing a cup of tea with Baba Yaga. This apparition of her was wild-- a gust of wind blowing in every direction. Her hair frothed like foam, and her eyes glowed with the many moons she’d bathed in. Myth paints her as a creature, a spinster witch seeking mischief and misfortune. She is too much, too soon, too empowered in her own wildness. Isn’t it ironic that a deeply embodied woman is something to be feared? There are so many fragmented realities of what the performance of a woman should look like that there is a gaping absence where substance would have lived. It looks like a chicken, it sounds like a chicken, but does it feel like a chicken? Baba Yaga has reached a state of utter disregard for how she is perceived, and somehow, she is more of a woman than I am myself. Womanhood is earned through ugliness, the taboo, the too-good-to-be-true. Our bodies bleed. Our breasts suspend in mid-air. Our skin melts as we age. Our hair exhales its last drop of color. Our faces become maps of the lives we lived, and our hearts grow heavy with the lives we wish we did. Baba Yaga is the ultimate woman. As I sit here on this scuffed chair, watching her stir her tea with her fingers, I realize the journey has only just begun. I am weighed down on each shoulder,
one carrying the anxious cardinal, and the other anchoring the majestic snow owl. It depends on the moment, but one bird always seems to dominate the other. The cardinal’s wings flicker like a light switch, twitching across branches at the slightest sound. It’s barely a bird; I’d call it a bright red omen. It shows up when I am curled within the bottle of my own fear. You can’t even twist the cap; I’m just fizzing on the inside, waiting to froth the moment I’m opened. The cardinal doesn’t feel safe unless it’s left alone, much like my generalized anxiety disorder. But the snow owl—oh, the snow owl—its thick, fluffy body is the embodiment of ease. A blanket of feathers possessed by the steady wind, it is trusting of the universe, unlike my generalized anxiety disorder. I can sense when both birds arise in me, when the cooing cardinal is telling me to run, and the snow owl is telling me to stay. The anxiety looks like a mangled beast sometimes, flapping one red and one white wing, trying to compensate for the weight of each, becoming a new creature entirely — a cardowl. I have tamed both birds on my shoulders, even as their temperaments warm and cool. The fire of the cardinal, extinguished by the snow of the owl-- a delicate dance I think I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life. If I had to paint a picture of my soul,
it would be one exhaustive sigh of color spilling across the canvas of what I thought life was supposed to look like-- to feel like. Brief in nature, yet it catches the eye-- like the red of a poppy in a sea of green, the sparkling flecks of light on a pond, the blue of a jay’s feather in a pile of leaves. You might miss it if you don’t look closely, and that is how I’ve felt for much of my life-- wedged between being seen and overlooked. I see myself clearly even though I am misunderstood, meaning slips through the cracks between us: I speak plainly, while you speak in tongues. I am not the black sheep, nor the golden child, nor the martyr. I am the space in-between breaths, Neither the exhale or the inhale. I am so tangled in myself that I belong nowhere. I am not the arrow, but its direction. You do not see me, hear me, or feel me-- yet I am needed for anything to move forward. It is a lonely existence, to be unto oneself-- to be the surrounding space rather than the one who fills it. Perhaps some of us were not brought here to experience the fleeting embrace of the world, but to hear its whisper-- solely to share that knowing with those who only see its surface. There are moments I ache to be the arrow-- To be anything but myself. I am plain in nature, unassuming, or that word I fear most: boring. Right now, I am content to be in the same place, rooted in the present moment as a kind of journey. Each time I look inward, something new arises within me. It’s hard to explain. I can only hope that it is worth being the vessel that carries all of you. Even though I haven’t traveled far,
I have gone to many places. Do not be fooled by the confines of my body-- I’ve seen realms beyond its reach, for the journey I speak of lives deep within the psyche, the kind you can’t return from, the kind that smears its fingerprint across the window of the soul. The mountains I climb cannot be touched-- only felt, like the hairs that rise after a shiver, or the breath held between reaction and action. I may not have traveled far, but I have gone farther than most-- on a journey of the mind, unseen, unrationalized, yet the most profound voyage any soul can undertake. I’ve abandoned the tight scarf of the body’s embrace, a shaman shapeshifting in the cracks of existence, seeking happiness, Anger, Sadness-- every fleeting emotion, as transient as the moment of traveling from place to place. Now that I find myself in this liminal space, I am not sure where to go. I can go anywhere-- and still arrive nowhere. Perhaps the only way to become who I am meant to be is to stand still. I cannot find myself out there-- amidst the distractions that will only slice me further from myself. What I am looking for cannot be seen. It is futile to think otherwise. And so, in this moment where everything and nothing makes sense-- where time and place do not exist-- I surrender. I do not have to go anywhere to prove that I existed. I have arrived not having left. The legacy of my ancestors wraps around my spine
like a wedge of cloth. It hurts when I sit down-- I can feel their threads digging into my back. I can’t help but witness the weight of their sacrifices in every step I’ve taken throughout my life. In the darkness of their shadow, I light myself on fire trying to appease them. Somewhere in between doing the right thing and fighting for myself, I burned to the point of no return-- a candlestick melting on both ends. As I spiral in a ring of flames, who have I become? I am a good kid-- a sacrificial lamb for those who have tried to live through me. However, after centuries of confinement, my soul has finally caught fire in the golden cage of my innocence. Now I burn for me. Let me deteriorate into a wick, toss me into a river so that I can finally be set free. I ache to be in the water-- going nowhere, being nothing, becoming nobody. The gauntlet of who you think I am has become too heavy for me to carry. Let me go. ⋯ What if his curse comes true?
“Someday you will repent for what you have done to me.” I’m the bad omen, The broken child, The black sheep walking deeper into my father’s shadow. I’m too afraid of what the light might feel like on my skin. “God is watching what you do to me.” If I am the cause of his pain, Then why am I the one suffering? The sound of his voice—it haunts me. It’s like a ghost that won’t get off my shoulders. Nobody can see it, But I sure as hell can feel it. It was there as I ran down the halls as a child, Slamming and pushing on the door with my back so he couldn’t get in. His voice cuts deep into my skin, Summoning a portal to the worst parts of me. With all of this anger inside of me, I could break everything-- Yelling and hysterically crying in a fit of momentary madness. If I’m the loudest in the room, Maybe I could drown him out-- But that’s not how it works. Maybe I am doomed to his incantations As they manifest my misfortune to life. I’d like to think that someday I’ll get out on the other side, A day where I don’t have to hold everything in. Damned if I do. Damned if I don’t. ⋯ While everyone else takes their hands off the burning stove,
I taunt myself for not being able to handle the heat. His voice lingers in between the hissing and sizzling of my skin: "Why are you so weak?" — he’s right. I was cut from silk, Stitched and sewn together with thread made from the clouds, Cleansed with the tears of the romantic, the dreamer, and the fantasist. Silk burns fast, So fast that when a flame touches it, It dissolves into thin air. I wasn’t made for the heat, But unless I chase flames, I will be left behind. The softness of my soul scares me. Shouldn’t I want what everyone else wants? I can’t frolic in the gardens forever-- What will everyone think of me? Everyone’s watching me, Batting their eyelashes in anticipation of my next act. They’re made of glass and steel; I am destined to be caught on their edges. I take my hand off the stove, Expecting to hear a gasp, Expecting the universe to collide and burst. But the room has fallen prey to silence. I’m the only one here. As the curtain begins to close, I imagine all that I have ever wanted: To grow a pair of wings So that I can float amongst the stars. To be put in a trance As I watch watercolors swirl inside of a cup. To be consumed by the warmth of the sun Without a care in the world. One less hand on the stove Means one more hand to hold. ⋯ Did you know that it would end like this--
Everything consumed in flames? I suppose the fire between us Spread like a disease. We danced around heartache, Mistaking pain for passion. Maybe I liked you broken, And you loved me being half empty, So that you could fill me With the parts of you Nobody else wanted to see. But I kept my heart open, Like a door, Waiting for you to come back home-- Until I realized That it was all gone, And that you took My heart with you. ⋯ |
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"You can only be afraid of what you think you know.”
― J. Krishnamurti
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