Page of Truth

Class assignment with its good moments--I've tried several times to hone this, but, perhaps, it is meant to be just as awkward and jarring and borderline mediocre as I tend to be.

 

I was told, write a page of truth.

And I was left with a blank page asking:

So, just who are you?

Who am I?

I am the only girl I know with violet eyes,

I am the only girl I know who prays for sullen summer skies

And who prays, on different days,

To Persephone, Krishna, Buddha, and Pan.

And who dances in the rain, and yet

I thank the rising sun for each day alive.

I took the time to learn the language of the land of that rising sun;

Aishiteru, aishiteru,

I love you, I really do.

But I am a girl who loves without permission or admission;

I will never tell you what is dear to me.

For all I love is tender,

And terribly prone to siege.

Even the names of the authors I drop

The way some do celebrity rock stars.

Gilbran, Poe, Block and others

These are my best friends because

Human names and human faces and human places

Fall too quickly from my memory

[so please, do not remember me so vividly]

I am not exciting enough for such things.

Audre says, “Do not remember me as disaster”,

Do not remember me as disaster.

My soul is made of other people’s words,

And I wrap it up in tights and skirts and corsets and scarves,

With eyeliner and porcelain skin.

This is the me that your eyes see.

You do not see all the places I have touched,

And that, in turn, have left their mark on me.

I am San Francisco at 4 am, silent and empty and cold. I am dressed in prom clothes, full of laughter, carrying cheesecake onto the beach to stand in the waves and squat at a bonfire we did not build.

I am LA, with all its poison smog and poison girls and beautiful flowers and dreams.

I am Paris, with all its lights and its dirt cheap bread and its cathedrals and its metro that can take you anywhere that has occurred in your dreams.

I am Venice, painted in absinthe and covered with the feathers from the carnival masks, floating on a gondola.

I am the silence of Dachau, with its soul chilling, bone chilling, monochromatic history of hatred and suffering.

I am my dojo, hand cleaned and hand fixed, filled with blood, sweat, and tears turning to triumph. I was forged there for four years until I earned my black belt, proving I had it in me to begin. All our endings are beginnings.

I am all the rooms in which I have painted, all the tables and sinks and paintbrushes where I worked under the Muse’s back-breaking stare. Searching for that most exquisite self.

I am the place I spend the most time, my own room, painted violet and shaded gold, filled to the brim with roses and pieces of mirrors and me. Finding that most exquisite self sprawled on the floor, under Brian Molko and Davey Havok and Amanda, pomegranate juice in hand and bright eyes on the record player.

Do you understand?

No matter.

It does not matter if you know me, if you remember me,

Just take this gift, it’s from Desiderata, I keep it on my wall:

“With all it sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.”

You are, I am beautiful.

It does not matter if you remember.

I am chasing my most exquisite self.

If you are chasing your own butterfly,

We are the same.