This whole time
I have been
Searching for Her
In Movies, Books, & Fiction

Wanting her to come off
The pages
Or jump out of the screen
So I can recognize her
And resonate and relate

All so I know I exist
Outside of myself
I wanted a character
To make sense of me
Pull my paradoxical-self together
In fiction form

Be a strong woman
And a vulnerable girl
A student of Law
And
Fairy Tales
A believer in logic and reason
But also all the abstract and obscure
To believe only what you see
And know the most real existence
Is what I cannot see

To laugh and smile with your eyes
Even after your eyes have seen so much death
To be this combination
That people claim I am
That is so rare

I am an enigma
They say

Normally people search for
Themselves
In the real world
But since that is where I already exist

Fiction seemed
More real than Life

I wanted to find
Myself in the world of
Fiction

A character
That could make sense of myself
So I knew I existed
In the real world

I wanted to know
That someone else
Could have pieced me together
And imagined me
And drawn my character in its arc

So I can relate
To more than just
A character from a Soap Opera
Or a heroine with a Bow and Arrow
Who is so real
Yet never smiles or laughs

But then
I realized
If someone
Could have pieced me together
In formula- fiction with such ease
I wouldn't exist
With all the paradoxes and complexities
That real humans do
In real life*

~JLH