my best friend pulled out a photo album yesterday, pointed to a pink swaddled newborn.

“that’s me,” she said, “july 7th, 7 pounds 7 ounces, born 7:37pm”

and i wondered:

if that’s her, then who am i?

how can i know, when my first memory

is white pillars and shouting and crying and fear, the smell of abandonment and the taste of dirt

my first word was chinese-not-english my orphanage washed away in a flood a week later

while i washed away in a flood of paperwork and strangers who called themselves my parents but sounded all wrong

and in the end (one year old but that’s an estimate) (severely malnourished) (call 911) (ma’am are you her legal guardian) that was who i was.

 

but i watched october suns sink smugly and one day i was someone else

 

“you need to relax” -- make that the 101th time someone’s given that advice

as if it never occurred to me to relax (who doesn’t love unsolicited opinions?)

i want to say, you try smiling and nodding

with a tune stuck in your head like a statefarm commercial that screams negativity, beautifully fractured dreams,

your identity is both inflexible and unreliable,

and you are sweetened by pain.

 

my brain beats out dot-dot-dot dash-dash-dash dot -- (well-calculated laugh) -- dot-dot

“never mind” and “it’s whatever” in stark black letters on a screen

i’m indecisive and willful, amalgamation of earl grey tea and being THAT kid and overambition with subtle tones of insecurity.

i suspect at times that i enjoy being THAT kid.

 

they tell me what i am not -- “you are not your label” “stop pathologizing” -- and then ask me who i am

well they have giant orange envelopes filled to bursting with numbers and scores and charts; i’d say they already have an idea,

so why are they asking me.

 

they ask me who i am

they mean, tell us about what you like to do so we can smile and say “i watch the office too”

but who i am is not what i look like

it is not my gpa / test results / clothes / weight / bank account

i am titanium-strong recovery, peanut butter and banana sandwiches eaten in the breakfast nook as i tick off month #9 (don’t need mederma PM anymore) (been round the block and back again)

i listen to music on the subway with earphones split down the middle, wires exposed (probably dangerous) (soon-to-be-bankrupt college students can’t afford new apple earpods)

 

it seems to me that the world is cast in a parallax effect

even stars don’t look the same depending where you’ve been thrown into orbit.

i see myself; they see me, and in life there is no parallax adjustment mechanism (such a deliciously clinical phrase) to be calibrated

then who is to say who i am?

 

so when you ask me
in a 100-words-or-less text box --
just know this.
i am more than a few words or a 30-character text could ever convey.

 

i am crying without mEaning to and laughing at things nobody else finds funny,

hospital halls white walls emergency calls and stubborn success.

my own lifeline; a worshipful no-man’s lanD with a captor that is slippery and fleeting

i throw out the keY and smile real smiles,

not for the polaroid but for mE.