Don't look back at this crumbling fool

“I’ve lost it,” I say to myself, the outlines of passersby disappearing as I see the redness of the sun under my closed eyelids.

The backyard was expansive -- a forest and a fortress. Sewage drained behind the swing set, and my brother and I would often jump across, pretending there were alligators lurking below the globs of brownish liquid. When I was younger, we played Cowboys and Indians and trekked the muddy terrain after it rained, exchanging fire with fake arrows and pistols, groaning as the orange sun grew big on the horizon and mosquitoes became the ultimate enemy. When I was older, I took a piece of Dad’s scrap wood still damp from sitting out next to the shed for several seasons, and ruined a giant sharpie marker writing “No Boys Allowed”. I clumsily nailed my sign to the playhouse and glared at my brother, who turned his cap backwards and shook his head at me in disgust. Most days, my pigtails bobbed up as I fiercely swung, determined to make it to outer space. I never jumped, but rather clung to the swing with as much energy as my young body could bring forth. I would close my eyes and feel the heat of the day, sticky sweat on my forehead and dirt under my fingernails, the breeze tickling my neck. I would lie in the grass and let ants crawl over me, a mountain. I saw the redness of the sun under my closed eyelids.

When did I turn into this?

I grew up. One afternoon I hastily plucked a rose from my mother’s garden in the front yard and peeled the petals away, chanting the familiar lines, ending at “he loves me not”. Another, I crushed a dandelion and mixed it with water from the hose in a little jar. Closing my eyes, I clutched the jar forcefully, wishing for true love, good luck, happiness. To me, happiness meant catching the eye of my elementary crush, a blonde boy who rode dirt bikes and squinted when he smiled. In middle school, I hid behind my long hair and my books, desperately hoping that any boy would notice me. In eighth grade, I held hands with a brunette skater. I still remember his soft fingers, the blush creeping onto my face as we walked to the buses together. I hadn’t even begun to understand.

Why does the world turn so quickly?


I’m afraid the sun has swallowed me up. Somewhere I’ve lost myself. I hold on to everything that has passed. People, objects, memories. I hoard them all, until I’m so full that I begin to burst and I lose me. And I’m afraid that my identity is actually composed of only the jagged parts of strangers, people I no longer know. I am a dysfunctional compilation of every person I have so selfishly seized.

I am afraid of who I am.
I am afraid of who people think I am.
I am afraid of finding myself again.