That Tracks By Melissa Lipnick
Look at me, but not so I know. Only a little, because I want to feel that I am seen, but not SEEN.
I love you friend, but you can't be my only. I need groups and categories and types so that my friend eggs are in many baskets, not just one.
Overscheduled became a nasty word, but if you can only breathe by expressing yourself twenty-five different ways, then it's a lifeline.
My food pyramid is like this: inhale books at the top, write and produce stuff equal parts below. Underneath is poetry (whispered, unsure), prose, paint, pictures. Guilty pleasures sprinkle the bottom; those are the passion projects, the new obsessions that consume the pyramid, then are cast aside.
You're trying to understand, I get it. What's the label say? It says so many different materials please just throw me in the washer and gentle dry. Cannot iron.
I'm going to stand in that bright light now and sing, yes sing. I do that too, but if you ask me to sing for you, I'll never forgive you. If the auditorium is dark, praise God.
Piano is my exhale. Writing is spilling my tea. Paint is anger, sadness, things to vulnerable to say. Pictures drawn and taken for my memory, my fickleness, my heart.
Not one child, but four. I came from four, it's all I know. There had to be exactly four.
I bleed Scarlett and Gray because I needed to feel safe that I could change my mind. It went like this: architect, journalist, english teacher, english lit. That'll do.
No really, this is who I am now. Room change. Oh, whoops. THIS is who I am now. Wide open spaces. I can breathe! Room change. Sorry for the mixup, I needed a cozy cocoon. Room change. Don't mistrust me, ok? I'm still me.
Oh yes, poetry (whispered). Romantic (really whispered). Girly (stop, just stop now. too much). Sensitive (well, now you've done it).
I could ask the universe a million times over to show me the path, but it's scribbled all over in sharpie marker. I'll take a little bit of this and that, pretend I pollinate like an orchard, and if you think me fickle, so be it. Just maybe could you click like on my stuff and notice but not notice so much I'm stuck there on that stage, with one spotlight, one way to exit, one song to sing?
THIS is who I am now. If I look back, that tracks.
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