i cannot quite tell if the poetic identity is a fragile one or not. we turn our lives into art, say the things that nobody cares to think deeply about. but none of us have written since birth. i wonder if a poet is born one, the talent for weaving words knitted into the threads of their dna, or perhaps if one is a poet the moment they write their first poem. but even then, can thoughts not be poetic? what about all the threads floating in my mind that took years to turn to fabric? do they not make me a poet? maybe being a poet is thinking a thought, and being brave enough to put it out onto paper. perhaps the poetic identity is an audacious one.
the world is made of tiny particles. they're so small you might not even care about them, but they exist. electrons and photons are the smallest--and electrons are always moving. swirling around in their orbitals. so why, you ask, is the chair i am sitting in stable? why is the table in one place? i don't really know. somehow all the atoms connected and became stable once more. somehow they connected and made you and i. isn't that a miracle? i could stand in front of a blackboard all day, make a million calculations marked in chalk, but i couldn't tell you exactly how the atoms knew to do that. i can tell you, though, that those atoms combined for a reason--billions of tiny particles decided that your existence was worth the work.
she clings to the threads of my sweater--i cherish every little bit of her left near my skin. don't you know, i'd tear myself apart if it meant you'd get a piece of me?
i see it in her gaze, the shine of a love that sticks in my throat. somehow my reflection in her eyes is not one that disgusts me.
her breath is velvet on my neck. i wonder if she'll be the one to decide to stay, all the others got swept away by the wind.
the first thing you learn in chemistry is that the atom is 90% empty space. the brunette in the front raises her hand. how does that work? she asks. everyone sighs. mrs macdonald shines her eerie grin. we don't really know, she says. maybe one of you will find out. i unclick my pen slowly as to not make a sound. the atom is 90% empty space. I am more vacuum than i am human. at an atomic level, i am nothing. is that supposed to be comforting? i blurt out, a supernova in the empty silence. it echoes against the tile. mrs macdonald raises her eyebrows. does science ever comfort? chemistry itself opens up all these existential questions. it's the scientist's job to find the things that nobody thought about much, and rip them open. gut them. make everyone worry. science is not for the comfortable, my dear.
the brunette in the front shuts up. the classroom is silent. the atom is 90% empty space. i decide that day to become a scientist.
she injects me with some sort of disease that leaves rings of scars along my upper arm-- the end of february has always brought a peculiar chill but this year it stings, misty air crawling through my open wounds. i think i deserve this.
they diagnose me with temporary insanity, swear that this love is benign. my mind starts to become clouded with the ice on my father's windshield, this disease settles in the crook of my diaphragm and creeps like frozen morning dew into my lungs. she tells me to breathe. i pretend this is a self-inflicted pain.
she grips to my mind, digs fingers into my frontal lobe. asks why i can't speak. i have spent too long thinking she is benign, can a lover be so malignant as a tumor?
february fades watercolor-soft like remnants of someone i once loved. i close hands around fireflies we caught together and wonder if three years of friendship was worth all the suffering. in the end, i suffocated in that jar.
she found me on the side of a river back when i was just the girl in the glasses. innocence newly washed away with the current and a biting need to be loved. she saw me, she saw someone she could reform.
i wring my hands and come up with ways to explain myself, no longer do i defend her like a soldier, i am the one fighting for my own dignity, spearheading this neverending war. heart pounding in my chest as i scribble frantic words, hands desperately clutching to someone i have no idea if i love.
she looks at me with those blue, blue eyes and tells me i am insane for thinking she ever cared. digs nails into my chest and thinks she has the last word, but i say that i am done and make sure my heels click on the way out.
i am a gravestone of all my past selves. hometown hurricanes wear me down, try to tell me that i have been clinging to these corpses for far too long. the wind blows leaves over the parts of me i want to let go, but they just reattach themselves to my mailbox like sixth-birthday pink balloons, glowing against plane-streaked skies.
i clench my fist around memories like i did sand on summer-holiday beaches. the sun beats down on everything i remember of my sordid childhood, burns those long-forgotten manuscripts. all woven together with the same blue pen, they seem to have faded when i lost myself in the frigid ocean.
