Beneath the Filter

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Beneath the dust-spotted filters every day life places on me, 

beneath the way they blend and skew the light over and around me, 

I am skin, bones, the way the sea howls, the way flowers grow towards the light, and some degree of messiness. 

I am old photographs of my grandmother's mother smiling gently like the Mona Lisa in the middle of rural Mexico, I am the arthritis in my mother's hands as she curls her fingers around wooden spoons. I am my dad's laugh that booms across walls, my little cousin's stutter as she learns a new word and tries it around in her mouth a few times before getting it right. 

I am twiddling fingers and long, drawn out sighs. I am the trees whispering in the August wind to each other to prepare for winter. I am the ocean, reaching forever to the shore but only retreating empty handed. 

I am a bird's chirp on the rolling hills the morning after a bloody battle. The still after the gut wrenching and the storm. I am the storm sometimes, the clutching to the frayed ends of a boy who doesn't know how to love anyone right, not even himself. I am my mother's cold shoulder and my father's third swig of whiskey. I am the trembling hands that offer the white flag, that dyes my skin white, and my blood, all the way to my bones. 

I am the gravity that locks the earth in the sun's eternal, motherly embrace. I am the sun, who loves the earth too hard sometimes and leaves her with scalding deserts. I am the fish beneath the surface, swimming towards the only warmth they know. 

I am skin, and bones, and some degree of messiness. 

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