I stand in my own way all the time.
I think that I am a certain way,
But act and think in another.
I can only see so far.
Everything irritates me,
Craving to float above them all.
But I’ll wrestle my way through the
Disregarding masses and talk to
Myself, huff and puff, and act in a way
That I’ve found repulsive since being a child.
It is too much, standing in a sea of egos.
Bubble against bubble, needles left and right.
I wear a dress made out of heavy grey clouds.
It has a trail, dragging me back to yesteryears.
It envelops my head and closes my eyes to who
I really am. It can suffocate an entire room.
And I look in the mirror and it seems golden.
My skin torn, my nails, my grandmother’s hands.
My mother’s sounds in my head.
The ebbing and flooding of my father’s behaviour.
My grandfather’s smokescreen, all connected.
Scratching the skin, the layers of me, the dress.
Walking through my own mud and get stuck in
Inherited ways. Transcend, transcend the smog of history.
“Female Portrait” by József Rippl-Rónai (1861-1927)
