I’m uncertain if these moments are mine or yours. If ownership does exist, I claim nothing. Forgetting my own face, not for lack of mirrors or pictures or Zoom calls, but from a disconnect between me, I, and me, you. This is no identity crisis. I am a metaphor.
I learn to sleep on an air mattress in the one-bedroom apartment I share with my mother. We don’t have any real furniture yet, but we do have a space to call our own. There’s no overbearing or intoxicated male presence to tell us what to do, and for the first time in my life, I’m not afraid to close my eyes at night.
Until school starts, and my new friends want to come over. Until my grade 8 science teacher wants us to model the galaxy using items we “have lying around the house.” She can’t see that I don’t have anything lying around the house. She can’t see that $5 worth of clay will take food out of my mouth.
I learn to create alternate realities. I know better than to believe that talk leads to action. I’ve been handed promise after unfulfilled promise, and I recognize that my father’s brand of achievement lives solely within an imaginary realm. I know his words were always a means of escape. He’ll never finish the house. He’ll keep punching holes in the walls he built.
I learn to hide behind a false image. I convince myself that I’m fitting in. My poverty floats in the shadows, a monster that I conceal with lies and brand names. I buy a new pair of shoes with my babysitting money. Three wasted Saturdays for one fleeting compliment. These shoes make me feel normal until I realize that the very recognition of my normalcy in this moment serves as evidence that I don’t really fit in. My friends don’t have to think this way.
I learn that every mask I wear only leaves me more exposed. If I could boldly accept my position in life, then maybe I wouldn’t feel so awkward in my own skin. It isn’t elegant to clash with unsightly surroundings. I am always falling out of place, wrapped carefully in my own vulnerability. When two delivery men come to bring us free twin mattresses, I want to be invisible. I want to jump in the closet or hide under the coffee table, but I can’t find shelter in this 500 square foot box. The mattresses are cheap and light, and I wonder if they’re made of abandoned cardboard and Styrofoam. I should be happy to leave our inflatable bed behind, but this new charity only serves as a reminder of my inferiority. We are food bank shoppers. I am starving for more.
I learn to hate accepting help. My mom can’t afford Christmas gifts this year, so the radiology department at the local hospital makes a donation. They buy me a new shirt and an MP3 player. When I learn that my friend’s mother is a radiologist at the hospital, I feel ashamed. I tell my friend that I can’t come to her sleepover. Failure meets isolation. I always blame myself.
I learn to run away from past. I shove all of my belongings into a single, pink, cow print suitcase. New country, new life, same pain. Poverty clings to me like an incessant stalker. The cycle continues, and I keep tumbling forward.
I learn to avoid the conversations that reveal my truth. I cringe when my grade 10 English teacher announces that I’m new and asks where I live. The loaded question. I try to use my ignorance to dance around reality. “I just moved here,” I say, “I don’t know my address.” I tense up as the teacher turns to her computer and prepares to strip me of my dignity. I feel naked. I am exposed. She reads my address to the class and I eat my discomfort. This is my secret. It was never hers to tell.
I learn to lie in fear of ridicule. I join the track team because my mother is working late and I don’t want to take the bus after school. I don’t even like running, but I run to hide my truth. This is part of my survival. When the season ends, the whole team chips in to buy a gift for the coach. We are supposed to bring two dollars each. I’m afraid to say that I don’t have two dollars. Who doesn’t have two dollars? So, I tell the captain I forgot to bring the money. Forgetfulness is more forgivable than being poor. “I know everybody else contributed to gift,” I say, “can you just leave my name off the card?”
I learn to part with expectation. There is no comfortable prediction of better days on which to rest my head. I don’t look forward to a real future. I’m not trying to find my way back to better days. I’m trying to claw my way out.
I learn to keep my story safe as my middle-classed college peers play their hand at the poverty game. They talk about collecting couch quarters to buy alcohol for the weekend. It’s trendy and endearing to endure a youthful struggle. It’s not charming that I started college two years late because I didn’t think I belonged here. I know exactly where I’ll be if I stop moving forward. Poverty is an all-encompassing and pervasive pattern. It sinks into the cracks of every aspect of life. It changes the way I think, structures my thought patterns inside a world with no safeguards. The bumpers retract at the bowling alley. My seatbelt unlatches on a busy street.
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I am the original,
And I am a facsimile,
And I am predictable,
An understood anomaly,
A parody of paradox,
The here and now,
The past,
A faded representative
Of things gone right,
At last.
And I am made of memory,
For you define me through
The pictures you retain
Of me,
And paint of my debut.
The words you hear inside
My mind,
Are permanent,
But new,
And I am all of this combined,
Restructured, within you.
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I don’t expect mutual comprehension, but perhaps feigned clarity, or a hint of resolution inside your inaccurate interpretations. We’re both making noise, though my effort is more potable and I don’t think you’re thirsty. I don’t regret spending the last of my dwindling energy trying to turn these thoughts to things, caught between adjacent truths. We do what we know and I think we’ve been here before. Keep moving. Step back. Identify the weakness but don’t destroy the pain. I just wish I knew where I was supposed to go, what I was supposed to say, and who I was supposed to be. Instead, I seek comfort in confusion and I choose my path with understated purpose, if not for your understanding, then for my internal peace. The problem itself is not a lack of capacity, but a lack of effort, and maybe for good reason. There’s nothing to be gained, only lost, and we are both products of circumstance. Ponder your strengths and let me exist outside of your mind. Leave me here until I’m cold and alone, banging on the door for warmth. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever reach your thoughts, or if I’ll stay here forever, in the outskirts of memory, my face a fading vision you can’t quite place.
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I stare at the unoriginal parts of me
Facing the tired mundanities
The constant misunderstandings
The stagnant fluctuations of self
Suspended in loss
Or light
Or loss of light
I hide inside a predictable honesty
I am the perception of forced clarity
Under the certainty of weakness
Hiding in vague places
I’m safer here
I’m safer now
It’s easier
I’m safer now
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The words I speak impulsively linger in my mouth, and once they’ve tasted freedom they have no intention of coming home. I am lost in a sleepy thought, a passing moment of uncertainty that I’ll forget by morning. I wish to immortalize my fears, so here’s my consumable insecurity. This world is full of unearned confidence.
The words I leave unsaid come back to haunt me. I take up too much space in my own mind. I grab a thought and try to make sense of the chaos that you left behind. Maybe I’m afraid of uninformed judgment, or cognizant criticism. Maybe it’s all the same. The weeks blur together and I cannot sleep. I ignore the pain.
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I’m still here, waiting in the past for your observation. Give me permission to reason, to buy my credibility in time and energy spent thinking. I’ve never given my thoughts much weight, though they weigh me down. Some concepts aren’t mine, and when I try to own them, they fade into the distance. My boredom grows.
Take a stance. Forget ambivalence. Leave your indecisive tendencies behind. I see too much in other people. I doubt and trust myself the same. My thoughts are clear yet muddled as I repeat the contradictions. If I could share my empathy, I would give you half of me.
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My head is growing heavy
in this shared space.
I’m not plagued by an inflated ego,
or a shrinking figure,
or your habitual neglect.
I’ve fallen into a unique fatigue
enhanced by conversation.
You stare at me intently,
but I remain unseen.
I sense your hesitation,
a lost hitchhiker
trying to find his way back home
while cars drone
through mountain passes,
over pebbles and
cracked pavement,
under misty orange tunnels
at sunset.
Your ears pop from the altitude
of the pass-through towns,
the tiny, trivial moments
you’ll never remember.
You say you won’t forget me,
but maybe I didn’t even exist
until your eyes hit
the back of my neck.
I wonder if I’m the lost one.
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I’ve heard that great writing stems from obsession. Seeds of stories plant themselves in an obtrusive space within the mind, but my stories are tired and slowly wilting. My obsessions hold me back. I’ve drowned my thoughts with too much care and repetition. I live through tired themes of transience, change, resilience, and contradiction. I have nothing new to say to myself, for I’ve heard this all before. I cannot grab an original thought out of the void of self-discovery. I’m exhausted by my own attention.
A few years ago, I asked my creative writing professor how he wrote so fearlessly about the people in his life. Don’t be silly, he said. Nobody you know will ever read your work.
I fluctuate between peace and distress, confidence and insecurity, patience and restlessness. I am not uniquely inconsistent. There’s abundance in the emptiness I feel during fleeting moments of vulnerability. One fragment of doubt permeates an entire lifetime of applause. Is it honesty or ego? Subjective judgment stands against the stale memories playing back at me. When you agree, I doubt myself further. When you misinterpret my purpose, I stand by my side with fearless reassurance of my credibility. I cannot predict the future. I cannot crawl out of my skin to see the world anew. So you can have this small piece of me, but I promise that you’ll turn it into you.
Denaya Rose 