Updated: 5/26/23
Dearly Beloved, if it's not too much to ask, could you do me a favor and kill the version of me that exists inside your head?
Please, please, please, could you be so kind,
as to erase that person from your mind
and meet me in the here and now the way you would a stranger.
Without the presumptions or misconceptions
inherent to the distortions that arise from outdated impressions
well maybe then and only then could we have a chance of really seeing each other.
If my personality
has a propensity
to be expressed in such a way which re-enforces the expectations I imagine another person holds of me,
is it any surprise that sometimes socialization feels like
suffocation?
Little container, little container
Stuck like a bug in a little container
Eventually, you crack open the lid a bit
and I'm able to breathe again but only for a little while
Contained within the cylindrical confines of your perception, my form dissolves and reassembles into an image of your preconception.
I feel slightly annoyed as I stew in your artificial chrysalis but I'm far too aware of my complicitness to be indignant.
Over and over I become enmeshed with you!!
Too quickly!
Too completely!
And with far too much enthusiasm to be considered altogether healthy.
I cannot complain, however, because in spite of it all
doing so remains my favorite socially-sanctioned obscenity
Eye disappear into you,
all the while, trimming the redundancies of Me (the ideal contours of which have been defined by you)
til I am more resemblant of a paper-cut design than I ever was of a human being.
Less complete, less intact
but far more pleasing to the Eye.
And shouldn't that count for something?
My hyper-permeable personality
has hightened my susceptibility to incuring morphologically grotesque mutations
throughout my insect life.
The porousness of the passageways allowing too many vestiges of you
in, in, in
and through the process I've been crystallized into something unrecognizable.
Where have I gone?
Where have I gone?
Perhaps there was nothing there to begin with.
In which case,
who could blame me for having assembled a body
out of all the resplendent pieces I was able to
steal from him and her and you and them?
A poor imitation, to be sure,
and derivative in every sense of the word but
generally permissible because of the appearance of having been assembled with
love.
And maybe it was. Or maybe it was envy.
It's hard to tell.
With all these things in mind,
might I not be more resemblant of an old quilt?
Could I possibly be less than the patchwork of characteristics I've pilfered off of Real people
and shoddily stuck, stuck, stuck together with Elmer's glue?
It's more likely than you think!
And perhaps that would explain why I've so often found myself falling apart.
I may not be the Magnetic North but I am a magnet of sorts.
And shouldn't that count for something?