I allow my mind to take me through a journey that tells the story of being chosen. Some years, the thread is thick and easy to follow; pain matching the crimson red of that thread—even now, there is an ache in my hips that pain belongs to.
Waiting to be chosenWaiting to be lovedWaiting to be acceptedWaiting for a proper familyWaiting for a mother that is saneWaiting for a father to come backWaiting for my body to fit into places, spaces, men, lives, jeans, and blouses
I’m too old for this s**t, and the gig is up.
Looking back now on the events, it was the last time I waited to be chosen by anyone.
It was a declaration—
Made silently to all the bleeding parts of every version I had ever shapeshifted in and out of—
On a busy street packed to the brim with life—children and mothers and brothers and husbands & wives all decked out in pink on a Sunday in October, where the cold is just now touching the air, and the body can finally feel the chill of a very welcomed Fall approaching.
My phone rings incessantly. I try to ignore it through the photos I’m capturing and the people I am hugging.
I finally call back, phone tight to my ear while my free hand plugs my exposed one, in hopes of drowning out the life behind me.
“He wants to see you.” She doesn’t even greet me with a hello…
Initially, her words felt like I was winning the family lottery.
My eyes jaded, couldn’t see then the truth of the painting.The truth—he had won, and I was his golden ticket.
He remains the ashamed receiver.
Perhaps that’s why he sends flowers by the dozens over the last 14 months. Even now I have to reserve cabinets and shelves to store all the vases of their remains.
Now I wait for no one.And release the aches in my hips—A pain that belongs to versions of me that no longer fit
that no longer exist
