I don’t want to be a puppet.
I don’t want to be empty and hollow and filled up with all of the things that affect me.
Full of things like unrequited loves and friendships and smiles and summers and funerals and handshakes and hugs and whispers.
I don’t want to be a sum of my parts.
I don’t want to be a person acting a certain way because of a certain event affected them in a certain manner.
No I want to be my own.
I want to clip these puppet strings and rise up.
Float beyond this human experience beyond all of the things that have held me down for so long.
All of the things that supposedly made me.
I want to strip that all away.
I want to empty it out and see if there is anything left.
See if in the corner of my left pinky toe there is something that’s been there all along.
I want to stand under a waterfall of scrub brushes
Have them remove every tattoo from this heart and soul.
And see if there is any color under all those words.
I want to hold my heart up to the sun and peer in.
See if inside these four chambers there is anything that beats of originality.
Anything that says my name.
Not yours or hers or his or theirs.
My name.
Something that says Amanda.
Because lately I’ve been feeling like every word I write
Has a name written under it.
A name that describes where and when and how I came to use that word.
Why I use that word.
Some of them make me smile a bit
Remembering the summer where I discovered ensconced and indubitably on the same night.
But others of them like fear and longing and pain
All have little tails too long to sum up.
And though some words make me smile they all make me cringe.
Cringe because I’m crushed by the unoriginality of it all.
That I’m just vomiting words onto a page, that someone fed me awhile back.
Like these fingers aren’t my own
This tongue is not my own
Even this brain of mine is not my own.
Instead I’m full of all these things people left behind for me to use.
Like discount clothes at a thrift store.
And not the good kind.
The kind that screams this was a steal.
No I’m talking washed out mom jeans and a shirt from a school I never went to.
I feel like I am stuck in this class jar
Pantomiming words that I don’t mean.
I wonder if there is anything that I can say.
Anything that when you use your little microscope
You’ll see my name hanging off the end.
I wonder if I can be completely myself
Because I’m tired of being a puppet.
I’m tired of filling up and letting go.
I’m tired of closing my eyes and seeing other peoples dreams.
I want to know if there is any ME left in me.
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