I Need A Reprieve.

This is not my capitulation.

I have not turned to glass, to a delicately wrought and heavily tarnished silver chain, withering to filament at its very joints.

But I need a reprieve.

There is no 9 to 5, trustworthy lunch break with a water cooler and boring, benign, broken down to indistinct morsels conversation, from the life I live. There is no midway breather, no moment where I can sprawl out or spin about on my belly, breech the turbulent waves of what has happened, what could happen, what is happening now, and float with my arms spread and my face turned up to the open sky.

I need a reprieve.

But what I can do now, with little air in my lungs and little cat-claw scars up and down my patience, but put my head down and batter on against the current - reach down through the dense foam and choppy tide to drag up rusted anchors, sharp and spiny creatures, old torpedoes and new, full-bodied instruments of pain and torment:

Ones that I, that my parents, that others have seen before and know for what they are.

New ones, pretty ones, well-wrought ones that those in positions of authority will address me, safe on the shore with megaphones permanently suctioned against their mouths, to drop back down and let settle into the dense, sticky sediment and sand.

I cut up my hands and strain my voice to be heard.

“This is how it is. This is how it is to live, today, and yesterday, and the day before. This is what I must endure, because I cannot shed the history of being considered under and other from my forefathers, my skin like a chameleon and step out of the beauty inherited from my grandmother, the knowing of leaving where you were and settling where you are not known from my father, the determination to be better and grow stronger from my mother.

This flower that trembles by my ear - the faith that whispers there, so sweetly, so softly, of hope and faith and love - the one you wish for me to rip away and perhaps my own hands, too, for daring to clasp it between my palms and will its fragrance to linger on my trembling fingertips and against callused skin - it has been, and it will be.

Tossing it away, to drown in the great wide sea, will not save me. Tossing it away, to be forgotten in the fathomless depths and dense foam will not make me forget who I am, will not make you see me through new-formed lens of approval, will not untether me from the history of being seen as under and other, the authenticity of being me.

I am full-voiced and bone-set. I am settling on steel joints and a well-wrought spine. I see and I hear and I speak and I pray and there is no moment when the whistle blows or the bell rings for me, there is no moment when the waves part and I can sprawl out or spin about on my belly, breech the turbulent waves of what has happened, what could happen, what is happening now, and float with my arms spread and my face turned up to the open sky.

I must and I will.

I will sow seeds as you salt the fields.”

You grow tired of hearing it.

I grow tired of speaking it. Perhaps I should not be so bold, so determined to drag back up every hateful moment, every deep wound, every assault and incident, every torn away scarf and beaten up boy and the endless life and living of today, and yesterday, and every day before and after that.

Should I speak, still?

Is this the moment, when my lungs empty out in preparation for another word, another grief, another acknowledgement of what is and what will be, that the life-giving air settles back within them?

Must I speak on this, and this alone? Is it the act that matters, or the words? Are these the words that will be the only ones I can deliver with such confidence: anecdotes of pain and frustration and exhaustion down to the hidden marrow of me?

If you do not hear these words from me, if I can no longer deliver them, what will be left of me that is worth to say? Is there a part of me, deep within me, that can speak for something else?

(I am so hungry to, so hungry to, so hungry to.)

Is it not water that flows through my fingers, but fire, lapping down my heels and licking the fibers of my former bridges with every breath I exhale?

I need a reprieve.

But this is not my capitulation.