Heir Imposter

I have hidden so long, the art of hiding has faded. There is no artistry in this merciless game of cat and mouse—identity and truth. 

How are the identical juxtaposed and the unified opposed in this hidden life? 

I am one mask after another, falling in a procession of dark deceit backlit by honest flashes, peeking in and out between my blurred lines.

For years, an infinite string of isolated moments, I have prayed to be what I truly am and to be seen so. Yet, every night I feel my Shepherd pull away my mask, and every morning I find myself trapped behind a new one. 

What am I, if not a versatile parasite, tagging along in the teaming crowds and gliding through life hated by none so much as myself? 

A smile’s flash, a winking eye, the whip-crack of a laugh. A silenced scream, a sob wracked chest, a pillow wet with tired tears.

What am I? I am these disguises. 

Maybe the juxtaposed and uniform are merely misplaced and misidentified. 

Perhaps these paper-thin protections and these poorly-lit projects are a part of me, a growing, breathing part of me. 


What if, my whole life I have been isolating pixels in one gigantic beam? 


What if the hand that pulls away the mask, replaces it with a new one? 


What if they are not hardened faces but instead layers of paint, covering me over and over again? 


I am not a single color or a simple shade, I am one magnificent masterpiece, and yet, I could not be a masterpiece if I was not a myriad of colors layered one upon the other. 


So, maybe today, I am blue. 

Yesterday, I was some other shade, and tomorrow I will be a new color; but today, I am what I am. 


A rush of blushed pink, a shadow of gray, and glint of glorious gold. 


I am all that I have ever been and ever will be, and it is beautiful. 


What a fluid, breath-taking sense of self! 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lampyridae 06.20.22

Hello Little Beautiful,  Welcome Home.  Tonight while we were listening to our favorite radio program--I wonder if you can remember it now--you fell fast asleep on the couch. I got up, but you stayed sleeping. Your hair which seems so neat and tidy during the day always grows full and fuzzes out while you sleep, clinging to your face and sticking to the pillows and cushions as your head lulls back and forth with every deep breath.  I made tea, careful to keep the kettle from whistling and waking you.  It hasn't rained in at least two weeks, and the change seems to mark the true beginning of summer. The unforgiving recession of winter and the drastic overhaul of spring seem to end in a lingering ellipses, not an omission but a pause. Before the heat of summer comes to bear in full force, there is a short space of calm between the wet and the heat. Maybe its the weather's confusion, but it feels to me, like clarity.  The dark outside our door was a blur of shade a...
Read more

Come Down, O Thou Great Jehovah

  This won't be a well-written post; I'm too tired for that.  I'm tired of things that I can't justify to any other person. I'm tired of love--all the abundant affection that I feel so utterly undeserving of. I got a gift just recently for my birthday, and I can't even look at it without feeling so undeserving of having received what I asked for. Who was I to ask for it? I bring no value to anything.  I'm not being self-loathing. I'm being honest.  Even when I show love towards others, it fulfills my own desire to love and be loving. I can't see a single person without filtering them through myself. I can't consider a single situation without weighing how it would affect me. I can't see a classmate or a friend without comparing myself to them subconsciously--almost to an unnervingly subconscious level.  I could live if only I wasn't always there. Living without myself in the picture would be so much easier....
Read more

Mud Pies 10.04.21

Hello Little Beautiful, Welcome Home.  I wish you could remember how beautiful Avalon was this morning. The sun rose lazily, and the forest air distilled into pure honey, glazing every breeze with a chill and gilding every bough in gold. Everything was cold and wet, studded over with dew. As the morning came, the earth seemed to give off a cool exhale that rose to meet the sun. The cabin roof dripped, the gutters muttered, and the wind tapped at the living room windows. The breeze through the kitchen was the clearest I’ve ever felt, and the rain at noon only revitalized it.             I let you out to play in the mud; nothing could keep you from it. On any ordinary day, you would have been thrilled by any mud construction, but today I was making bread in the kitchen, and the impulse to mimic my art with mud was far too strong for you to resist. For nearly two hours, I watched you through the window over the sink as you formed mud pies, carried the...
Read more