A Room for a Girl Hidden in Plain Sight
(From Between…)
How to write of the place from which one sees?
Quickly, I turn to catch a glimpse of only the shadows,
the projections.
Struggling to peer through the lying frozen mirror,
the self unseen.
The women Picasso saw, kaleidoscope I’s eye.
Each view eclipsing others, the partial treated as whole.
I speak of you, “my” inner girl.
As if there could be an I not you from which to speak.
It’s easier to distance and speak of our biology.
Owned together if foreign to one.
How are “you” the spoken of, not the speaker?
All the dualities embedded in our language.
Subject/object, mind/body, self/identity, male/female.
Violence, tears, tears, from the start.
Can the slash itself not be real?
Holding together, neither without the other,
a third term denied.
Twined, half in visible hiding, absent and present.
Tension, not consensus, two the origin of life,
From the atom to the universe unity based in pull and repulsion,
Loving struggles, conflicting chambers of the heart,
Unheard conversations of delight.
“Girls can have penises too” I/we/you proclaimed too early.
How young, how naïve.
Why not? When I stand here so real
Born only knowing what is
Not what is supposed to be.
Born into a world that already decided.
The boxes to check, in-formed from the start.
Who can claim that one must be chosen, defined, made final?
How impossible the names, the presentations
Convenient for counting, reveal parties and control.
How shall I name us? Words misleading,
saying too much and too little.
How to announce us with a world ready to misunderstand?
How should we deal with the confusion, the jokes?
Standing against the world, in anger, silence, sadness
Our own understanding has to be enough.
Puberty comes, confusion matters, silent announcements made.
Never me an adolescence, a place to try and err.
My sister is dying, my mother grieving,
my father struggling to keep all afloat.
Misplaced responsibilities, confusion piled upon confusion,
I am silent, no words, no language to speak.
How will I hold a head high, knowing not where nor how to look?
Be normal, avoid the misrecognitions, be yourself, not your self.
Hide with you the dyslexia, the introversion, the smell of cows.
Where was the time, the energy, the support, the path?
Still, I know I failed, we remain alone, married to each other.
Now, a room, a space, an expression, our place.
“I” offer spaces to dream, books to read, the peasant dress to wear,
Places of beauty, travel, the beach wrap, the artistic moment.
Yet, I cannot replace “your” lost first kiss, music, dance, tea parties, your prom.
The warmth, touches, camaraderie of female friends.
But we had what we had, the joys, the pains.
Choices without choosing long ago,
Accepting the “is-ness” of the world.
“I” often separated “you,” made you as separate as a room,
And I often wanted to be that you, but mostly I wanted to be us.
