I am fire works and gold mines. The primary colors and busy umbrellas. I am wispy pony tails and wistful eyes. I am training bras, braces, back packs and panty liners.
I am a girl grown too big for her little britches. My favorite old dress, with Ragedy Ann on the front, which I tried so hard not to grow out of, or ruin, still sits safety pinned and dirty in the back of my closet. The day my shoulders wouldn’t fit, in the third grade, was the day I began to fear growing up. The day I turned twenty, sitting at midnight in a friends car, was the day I learned I never have to.
I am squeaking wood floors, and squeaky wet shoes, squeaky clean records, and a dirty mind. I am cotton, and fabric, and imperfect stitching. I am tea with sugar, honey and little spoons.
I am years old lipstick and milk white tights. I am thighs and blood, Cheeks and smiles. Pearls, paper, pens, saddle shoes, shopping lists, and empty calendars. Maybe a mechanical pencil or the occasional poorly knit mitten.
I am a woman in the strangest of ways; An excerpt from the 1950’s with aprons and cast iron frying pans. I follow when I dance. I’ve saved up to buy a vacuum cleaner of my own. I was excited to finally buy it. I paint my face and wear perfume. Some days I crumble away into big shirts and old jeans then blossom into sweaters, blouses and bright skirts. I thought I was a woman the day I got my period, then again the first time I made love. Now I wonder will it come when I marry? When I am first with child? But underneath this doormat, where both mud and greetings lay, I’ve been a woman all along.
I am a lover too impatient to be loved. However, I am loved mysteriously and finely. I need to love, to hold and breath as one, and so I do. The girlfriend the family loves more than their son does, or the girl his family pretends does not exist. I wear my hair up, move the hips, take the showers and often wear his clothes. I would sweep his floor and make his bed, scrub his bathroom and cook his food, if he would make what was his ours. I am not a wife but I would like to be a bride.
I am old carpet thread inherited down from my mothers sewing box to mine, still far from running out. I am army green buttons and antique kettles.
I am a mother to young to mother my own. I can feel the fertility washing over me in cycles with the moon, and know the waxing and waning of my desires for a child. Each new moon finds me happily wasting time. Each full moon finds me wishing for a family, and wanting to grow wide like that silver sphere herself; warm bellied, sturdy standing, the world’s precious commodity. My baby’s hope and home and future. Like the port from which they shall sail. But still, I have no such child.
I am thick glasses and leg warmers. I am deep green carpets and coffee colored walls. I am songs sung so many times that the lyrics wear thin. I am the old picture of the three brothers, like one man, in stages of succession to becoming their father.
I am misplaced and re-found. I have lost my religion, and lost my faith in man kind. Half of my soul has been eaten by impatient men masquerading as lovers. Women aren’t half better. I have loved the female form, the woman’s eyes, hair, smells and impossibly soft skin. Like her life force was something intangible, simply as a woman. So quickly could I forget She and I were women both, and give over every wile I ever had to such a beautiful creature, and even more beautiful a person. She took her own bites out of who I was, and left me just as torn.
I am a girl, a child, and that will never change: I will always need my mommy, and shuffle my feet. I will whine when I’m hurt, and think homework is dumb. I share my body as a woman: full breasted, round hipped, and in a pile of clichés. I am a fierce lover: One doesn’t need to be Betty Page to wear black, nor does one need marriage to blissfully cry in love and for love as I have. I am a heathen: I have loved before marriage, even unto female flesh. I have forsaken your saviors. Regardless, I have found peace, beauty, honesty, and good will. I have learned I don’t need a reason to be good, or kind. I just need the time to do it. I am misplaced money, changing leaves, and nice socks; the kind you wear as soon as they’ve been washed. On a weekend I am pillows, and blankets, sun spilling window frames, and pancakes.
Were a pail set outside on the planet in the valley where emotions are made, and the droplets sprinkled down contaminated like acid rain, raught with intermingling and undecided feelings, filling up that tin bucket, then I would be this bucket too. One knows a human is filled with the possiblitites of each individual emotions. Like a master of the elixirs, I have over 3,256 flavors. As the base flavor, when bottled, my ingredients read clearly; Exasperation, Intimacy, Joy, Skepticism (as a preservative), Hope, Sadness, Melancholy, Anger, Attachment (for consistency). Not an ounce of High Fructose Corn Syrup.
I am so many names that not one seems to fit, and I am a series of logical contradiction. I am punnant squares and ven-diagrams expressing the important science of naming color crayons, and where my gene for “eccentric” really came form. I am my tattoo’s, chosen life scars my mother hates. I am I am everything, like the world. I am nothing, like a list that does not exist. I have also said “I am” about 27 times in this essay so far. I guess I am repetitive as well.
