Gnossienne no. 4
Tell me a fun fact!"
"Well, what should I say?"
- I'll admit it right now: I'm not an artist.
- I'll tell you how my hand sculpture broke and since that day my eyes have sat glazed and fixated on the idea of a certain institution that won't accept me without unless I wear a costume made of latex and lies, and
- I'll tell you how I left acting because I realized I couldn't keep up with the character I'd adopted and that I quit music because I realized it's a rich kid's sport I'd never win without real training.
- I'll tell you I'm unintelligent. I'll tell you about the fundamentalism ingrained in me from knowing too many real-life Duggars and Plaths,
- going to church in a place where they told me the world was ending,
- and the folks who just like niceness are directed to burn under the devil's sheets.
Yes, I fight over misogyny that I've been the one to tell myself.
I have to remind her, "be decent!"
Yes, I try so hard to get better but I don't know if I can.
And it all makes her so ashamed, but aware, but if nothing else in about less than a year
it'll be a hell of a college essay.
"A ten paragraph statement."
"About anything I choose?"
I am sick of my world not being comfy with me. I am sick of being the outlier.
The higher education, go on get higher,
go on get higher and I still can't stray from their bodies
that sit on the sidewalk and wait for their next move to come in tongues
with a small side of fries, please.
They beg of Him and him and he.
And the way that one of the three texts makes me scream, the way that I have to
figure out what I'll say to the pastor, "your son is a creep,"
feels like a plea, am I crying for help or for him?
I can't even ask hushedly when
my friends condone a patriarchal society and embrace the males that I once loved
and once loved me enough to do regrettable things, but
"Boys Will Be Boys And He Will Be One Of Them!"
My head will stay down, I won't open my mouth again. I won't try to warn
my (ex?) very best friend of it and the way that he got in my head. His name even rhymes with a drug.
But the car that I drive out of this place in will run off of stories from women who survived
times in their life
when they weren't sure of anything but desire to up and get the hell comfortable
past the state lines.
(My car will be red. Red like a crucifix.
Red like a bloodied cross,
red like a car crash.
Red like how I imagine my voice sounds when I scream out
this next phrase. Headphone users afterwards might need hearing aids...)
"Let's review your extracurriculars."
"Can I leave the church without leaving religion?"
Am I going to Heaven or Hell?
I've been told I'm going to a socialist camp,
I've been told I'll be among the first taken to the barracks when martial law kicks in
but they don't ever answer my question.
God is clear, God is clear, God is clear.
So the fact of the matter is that I may or may not be burning as I stand here anyway,
I ask myself if a thousand years more could make any difference and shudder at the thought that it could.
I am not the change I wish to see in the world. My family is not proud of me.
My friends have all left me, they preferred when I wasn't a hypocrite.
God is clear, God is clear, God is clear.
I was fun when I condemned feminism and handed over my body to the old men in power.
I was fun when I paraded around in my homemade Donald Trump mask and talked about becoming king of the world.
Those tapes are deleted. Those friends have stopped calling.
And this is a program I don't want to get into, this is not an interview I wanted to have.
I've seen your people and they'd never accept me,
look at my history for yourself and don't try to put a triangular peg into any other hole than which it belongs in.
"Riddle me this now, what color is God?"
"Anything else you'd like us to know?"
"I don't think so."
- Do you ever wonder what I feel like?
People lay me out like it's biology class. They dissect my insecurities and take apart my brain just to see what's wrong with it.
They scour at the discrepancies and things I'm still trying to fix.
- Some dreams are best left as they are.
Yes, I've dreamed of this moment, of talking to you. I've dreamed of showing off this school's shirt at graduation, of saying "see, I could always fit in, you just wouldn't have me!"
I've dreamed of coming and finding out I was everything like you.
No matter what you might say to deceive me, I see that I'm not.
- This is not what I want for myself. I deserve something better where I can fall in
and I need somewhere where the people aren't screaming
and I am so sick and tired of being nearly near fake.
And everything I write makes me sound fourteen years old again.
I'm hesitant to use the words broke girl but is that what I am?
The first time it happened, I was thirteen and I watched the votes tally and the church leaders scream
and was the world ending? I don't think I knew
but as I fell asleep, listening to the folks on the phone, as they got quiet and calm and then much later, happy,
I said a simple prayer.
God, don't let the world end over something like this.
Don't let the world end when I still haven't seen it.
That's all it comes down to. This is the end. I need to go to a place where I can fit in.
Where the world feels intact, where I can quietly sit.
Where the world keeps on twirling. Where I too can spin.