If I’m Being Honest

What am I on paper but a name in a billion? All with hearts and blood and bone and marrow, but on an achingly empty page, we are all just names, and names, and names, from birth to death to that thin stretch of life, sometimes I wonder, who exactly am I?

One. I was peaches and cherries and sugar-drunk skies, animal crackers and blue jay nests, a fairy in disguise. I left my fingerprints on the windowsills, cut my name into soft-barked trees, danced in the thunder and wandered the rain

Two. I was tears massaged back into their pipes, until my head became waterlogged, the careful lap of salt against skull, the hollow thrum of the sinking mind. I was swallowed stones lodged in vocal cords, and quivers prayed right out of the tongue

Three. I was the baby and the umbilical cord, tangling the neck. Thoughts and opinions were rendered useless, strangled into breathless depths, and I suffocated on my lifeline. Through grade school I could feel it, these scars, the phantom pain, words dangled off lips and were hanged on their hopes, the silence refused to fade

Four. I was long hair, cat eye frames, and so many apologies caught in metal braces that my smile became a synonym for the word sorry, regret was an acid reflux, I confessed false sins through open lips, I stumbled and fumbled through retainers and eye charts, hoped to God my nerves were a simple side effect to my awkward facial ornaments

Five. I am In-N-Out cheese paper, candy teeth and a swollen heart, a water baby, a princess, a hiker, a daughter. I always believe in a half-full cup as long as the contents are something sweet, I’m blue skies and sun and white lies and hugs, apologetic imperfections

Six. I’m learning that compliments aren’t just pills you swallow without water, I’m learning that tears are not as simple as salt and embarrassment, I’m learning that some whisperings are reciprocated, as the walls of my bedroom go black and the shadows collect secrets like they collect darkness, their laps full and heavy of something more than just wondering

Seven. I realize that sometimes the stomach is a vacuum, sucking chrysalis down off the roof of my mouth until butterflies bloom in my intestines. I’ve grown used to letting them drown in the tears I refuse to let leave my eyes. But I know I’m a work in progress.

Eight. Can I tell you a secret? Sometimes, sometimes, my skin gets too heavy for my bones to bear. These fractured identities we are forced to shoulder, I am often buckling, struggling beneath the weight of the many people I have been.

Nine. On paper I am simply thirteen letters and five syllables. I have eraser crumbs in my eyelashes, red pen marks on my arms, but life, life is a lot more complicated than pencil scratches. It makes me wonder who first looked at Jackson Pollock’s mess of paint, and called it art. Because don’t we all just want to be named a masterpiece?