I see myself
reaching for an unfamiliar color
of fingernail polish;
how it seems so trivial but
how it seems so canonical;
a color I am drawn to, but
a color I am repulsed by, and
I stand in the aisle as time whirls on around me
wondering who I am becoming and
if I will like her
when I am her.
I study the little jar;
suddenly I am crying, and
I want to console myself
I want to control myself,
I want to embrace and deny this shift,
I want to get on and I want to get off,
but really, it’s an earthquake and
I am trapped in a doorway trying to survive,
the choice taken from me, forced upon me,
and I am kissing the ground as it trembles beneath my feet.
I wear a dress of chicken wire,
binding myself inside,
bracing against the tornado I feel
on the horizon;
still recovering from the quaking earth,
my heartbeats strain to make themselves
heard above the din but
I find myself unwilling unable unknowing to listen.
This strange and fractured comfort
this vaguely familiar unfamiliarity,
a place I have been before but
somehow so different this time,
a lover who has moved on and is leaving me
but stops to take the time to wait
as I struggle to catch my breath
and I know I am broken open
I know I am spilling out,
I am conceiving the me I will become
and I will birth myself when the time comes,
alone and breathing lamaze
singing and cursing, wailing and frightened and strong.
I gasp and
I drop the little jar;
it shatters,
the unfamiliar color of change
spilling out, bleeding across my feet
as I take those tender first trembling steps
across my sharp splintered fears
towards who I am becoming,
and my arms involuntarily open to take her in.