once a stranger found me in the poetry section
of our shitty little public library,
and he watched as i etched each poet’s name
into my skin
because they were more deserving of the life
that i possessed than i was.
and he told me that i could never be a poet
because all female poets kill themselves
and i was worthy of so much more than that,
and i knew that to believe him
was to disregard myself but i did that so often
that it almost didn’t even count that time.
my mother used to tell me various things about myself
and although many of them weren’t true
(because my favorite composer was never Bach
and i actually am afraid of what lurks in the dark
and being a lawyer was never an aspiration of mine)
i eventually began to believe them
but the habit never broke
and now i let strangers write my life story for me.
but i've recently decided to build a large cemetery
on the edges of my backyard,
to bury all the different versions of myself
that never truly existed for me,
but did for everyone else.
