i am who i am.
not a name, not a number, not a reset button.
not hair or clothes or wordless things that
call to me from big cities.
i'm staring at hair and it's staring right back,
but you're staring at me and
i've chosen to look the other way.
trains rush by in the rain on slippery tracks
and i'm afraid they'll never stop moving,
rushing blindly forward in torrents of what
must be starving icy thunder.
we are the passengers and we're scared as hell.
but i am who i am,
going nowhere in circles and and
tracing petite diamonds with my fingertips
(sans sparkle, of course.)
down the sinkhole i spiral with no wings
to catch the air beneath me, but where is the bottom?
i was born without the remote: just another
Fast-Forward Girl floating too high off
the surface of her cereal bowl.
i'm stumbling out of bed on cold mornings because
the car is here and i've got to go somewhere other than this place,
somewhere with a big red X saying
"I am here" in the very center
of my universe.
i am who i am, and
maybe that will be enough for you.
you hold my hand and say nothing at all and somehow
that will always be enough for me.
i don't ask for your forever, i ask for
a finger, a tooth, a song.
give me a beat, a broken mirror, and mile-high windows
and i won't be lost anymore.
i'm up for sale, more or less: would anyone ever want these
small blue eyes that have seen so little?
she's gladly trading bottle flames for smashed headlights because
she takes what she can get.
i'm writing poetic so you can't make assumptions,
writing noetic because my mind is infinitely collapsing in on itself.
still, i am who i am, no future written
on legal pads
or pink Post-Its
or in the leftover foam
of coffee cups.
i carved my name into the piano because i thought it
belonged there, took a pen and busted it
to see what sour blue ink would look like on
the white concrete below.
i am who i am.
you are thinking i am just another 2-by-3 in someone's back pocket,
but in a life full of pins and needles, i am
the blue balloon with
the red letter trailing
sweetly behind.
don't think.
on the X i yell to the eggshell sky,
"I am here!" but no one is there
to catch the whisper.
so who am i now?