Appearing
I peeled my image from the endless cameras, burned off the nerves
in my heart to feel nothing when I looked at my corroding reflection.
I became a ghost in every friend’s picture frame, my body dissolving
into blue noon fog, diffusing myself into the white expansive sunlight.
I begged for erasure. I wanted to be beautiful. I stared at myself
until my face swallowed my soul and spit it back out like the pit
of a sour fruit. I craved to strip to the bone, then melt down the bone,
be left as only a collection of the beautiful things I’d create: paintings
and poetry. I thought my life would be so beautiful in my own absence.
I dug at the mirror until I fell completely through. I found myself in echoes.
I did not exist for four years. I became beautiful out of spite, out of
self-hatred. I wish someone had taught me how to do it better.
I stare at my reflection in the rear view. I am startled by being human.
I turn my face and watch how the light catches in the blue glass of my eyes.
I compile the art that I’ve made, thumb through the pages, witness
the versions of me unfurling like moonflowers in the darkness between.
I am older, I can see the years passed stripping off like layers of wallpaper,
and I was always the same damn thing. The stone around me has broken down,
like a marble statue chiseled from a prism, I have eroded myself into something
lovely enough. My under-eyes purple, my scars smooth and I do not disturb them.
My hands have shaped many things. I touch my skin, wear it like my own,
not a burden or bag of bones to drag. I expand to fill the voids I once hid within.
I collect photographs of myself, marvel how my head doesn’t burn itself to ash
when I see my own appearance. One day I began to appear. I began to live.
