HISTORY
9.22.20
I’ve been named many things this lifetime. Manuela, Manu, Manny, Blue, Bloo, Blue Bear, Blue Bird.
I’ve been named Pretty, Sexy, Smart, Friend, Lover, Mistress, Foe. On my less proud days, I am Mean, Cruel, Cold. I’ve been named Petty, and Generous.
To my grandmother I’m the the product of messy linage and a corrupted present. True predator playing lamb, hiding teeth behind teeth by drowning trauma and wrongs.
To my mother I’m a scavenger’s daughter. I could never stop building nests full of “yes”. How could we? Scavengers survive by starving a corpse in its place.
Make a fraud of yourself long enough and the fault lines do what they want with your mirrors.
The day Justice dissented, the city became a heavy gasp.
That same day monsters were introduced without the courtesy of foreshadowing. At least that’s what they tell me.
In truth, these monsters had been dancing on the pages of our country, making bookmarks of our ignorance. Saying “look over here, over here!”.
They cut off sentences the way knifes cut ovaries.
I woke up that morning to stomachfuls of wrecking balls, dagger bellies, worn debris. One storm after another, scattering against our shingles and gathering gray hair in our hope spaces.
I bulldozed my rib-cage onto the bridge, collecting what remains I could, keeping myself unkilled in the monsters’s cartilage. Taunting traffic bellow to come a little closer, yes a little closer. I can play this game too.
Fate and Death’s eyes were on strings, swinging from a ceiling I couldn’t see. Wide as white flags, watching me.
It was Death who made the first move in killing the cannibal beast between my eyes. She looked like loneliness, wet food, and skin diseases.
She died before ever being born.
Justice took her place.
Forcing an eye to the future where I should have lost a lot of years. Probably lost a lot of years. Definitely gained another lifetime.
After the massacre, Fate handed me a mirror. My name engraved in every strangers eye.
This is who I am:
A knot in that monster’s stomach. I twist at its insides and mouth
“Look. Look at me. Look right at me because I am looking right at you.”
The monster snarls, but I twist a little harder. “Snarl all you want, and call me what you will, because you no longer scare me, beast.
And I’m going to eat you, from the inside out.”