They think I’m dramatic and they’re right, but not in the way they think I am. I feel through a kaleidoscope lens of intricate sensations who ebb and flow through brightness and vibrations. It is often intense and sometimes displaced. Like thunder in the snow. Paradoxical, perhaps, but immutable through sincerity. A costly feature to be recognized, appreciated particularly by those faceless invisibles who yearn to align with the rest of us. The ghosts in chains, unable to depart and hopelessly incapable of arriving. The invisibles respect the volume; they peep the realness. The rest just think I’m loud and they’re annoyed by the heavy toll of my presence. ‘Keeping it real,’ as they say, ‘is keeping you poor,’ because the donations never seem to find the way to their checking accounts.
They imagine that I’m poor and they’re right, but not in the way they think I am. I am not an esteemed member of their groups, their cliques, their us-ness. I’m the comical other. I don’t speak the native language and I can’t cook the food and I have no reassurance of my authenticity beyond my own consistent behavioral trends. My skin color prepares you for nothing about me beyond that I’m built for the tropical rainforest. There is no frame of reference beyond the lifting of people’s baggage. You kind of just have to wait and see why they keep me around and hope I’m seriously as awesome as people say I am.
And they do say I’m awesome and they’re right, but not in the way they think I am. It’s more than multi-lingual sex puns, far more than the witty aphorisms and pop-culture knee jerkers. It’s deeper than Facebook likes and shares and more ample than the miles of reciprocal confessions in between airports. You see, I’m good entertainment, something to soothe them over comfortably between the commercials or the unusually naked moments they slip and fall and reflect upon themselves. It is bittersweet to them how the inexorable comforts that sedate their sacred anguish is both liberating and cruel, and especially cruel. The cruelty is noted precisely in how much I know, in how much damage to their reputation I’m capable of causing despite how little is actually said. Awesomeness settled in mercy. They forget that silence is part of the conversation.
But they do remember to say that I’m cruel and they’re right, but not in the way they think I am. I don’t remember names. Not even the ones I’ve spent memorable birthdays with. I crush annoying insects, sometimes without explaining to them why I’m about to crush them. Especially the ones with wings. I delete people I love because they don’t love me back. I cherish exquisite wounds on my heart as if they are marks of passion pridefully placed. I allow myself to know and to be known by people who wish to remain unknowable. I drink poison to distort myself and the world around me. I ignorantly give to the tragically undeserving and I am, somehow, praised as being strong for doing it.
They assume I’m strong and they’re right, but not in the way they think I am. An artist, I am at once a victim and warrior accustomed to pain. Submerged. Scarred. Secluded. But whenever I fly I see my works splurged all across countless hearts cracked. Kintsugi through compassion, glued back together with golden acts of service. Strength of purpose. Made whole through laughter at major moments. Getting heavy in happiness and wholesome in thought. A whole lot of hearts to carry as one carries on wholeheartedly. Striving, awkwardly, toward wholeness.
And they act like this isn’t the whole story and they’re right.
