Of freaking course I’m attention seeking.
I exist, don’t I?
Sometimes I need reminders I exist, don’t I?
Look,
I’m not mirage nor magician
but I sure am real great at disappearing.
At moving in minimize-
at speaking in silence,
in cemetery
because I long ago buried my voice
every time my mother spoke over me
I struck the dirt harder until I was so covered in soot I was somewhere secret even from myself.
So I’m pretty great at that now,
at not seeing myself or hearing my holy
my holy
is in a language I keep forgetting
the words to.
I never really learned them anyways
never quite could call myself clean.
they didn’t offer that course in my college.
they didn’t offer that course in my childhood.
so instead I mastered worry 101,
several seminars in self-loathing and advanced emotional outbursts for practitioners.
Thankfully I found poetry but let us remember that writing sounds like writhing and maybe that isn’t accident after all.
‘Cause to write this poem I ripped out my nervous system
and made it front page news.
“Extra extra: bleed all about it.”
I graffiti stained a billboard in my own blood which felt like the first time I realized sacrifice and Cyn
have been synonyms for 28 years now.
Every time I acted selfishly it was because I wasn’t putting the word self top shelf or anywhere besides the back burner.
This is not excuse but context.
This is a how to manual on how to handle me.
I think I wrote it for you-
I mean I think I wrote it for me.
I feel guilty for writing it at all.
guilty for taking up space all the time
trying to stop feeling guilty for taking up space all the time
Cause the several years of self-silencing and shrinking did not work
nor the eating disorder
nor the hours of hesitation involved in hanging up my jacket born of unending worry about being in the way,
but split, still,
because the more I segment,
the more I shed and the less I am
and I love that
the more I am able to be in two places at once
the less I am to any one thing.
I am learning
everyone likes to be reminded they deserve to be here, even me.
And I have to like my jokes without a laugh track in the background.
I am not mirage nor magician but I am great at disappearing but that sure doesn’t mean I have to.
If I know one thing,
it is that I don’t need to abracadabra myself into non-existence for the ease of others
anymore.
& 