Throwing off bell curves and bell jars since high school, I
have lived and suffered all of what you praise me for now. I have testified in
front of my mother and my legislators
the same number of times. Why can’t you see me?
I have written, over and over and over, of all the ways I
was hemmed into preordained ingredients, sewed piece by piece after a pattern
and baked into place, and I have been lying to myself the whole time.
IF I was brought up to believe that man is god’s perfect
image and likeness
AND that angels are god’s thoughts passing to man
AND who I am is a crumbling wreck of fabric remnants strewn
across the shining linoleum of my mother’s house
AND the thoughts that live with me are those of adherence to
chemicals and all the ways that sex and violence leave the same taste in the
mouth
THEREFORE what conclusion can be drawn but that I have been
lying?
IF I have been an addict my whole life
AND addiction is a disease
THEN my entire upbringing has failed.
But still. Who has lied to whom? And who has failed?
The history of my body reads as an opening in the earth, a
growing chasm with unknown depth, a quarry they’ll mark as dangerous, for
others to keep away. Synonymous with fail, the action of aborting has defined
me in ways I can’t quantify. Two is a wrong number, when the outcomes have been
manifold. One partner is a wrong number, when the ramifications have touched
every partner I’ve had since.
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