It’s 6:23 a.m. in Los Angeles, California, and the sun is rising and I don’t know who I am.
I’m pretty, but I don’t believe them, so fake it ‘till you make it, I guess.
But when does it end?
I’m not her anymore.
The old me, that third-person severed persona of mine.
I can see her so clearly in the landfill of shrapnel where I left her.
I’m not sad that she’s gone so much as I am sad that I’m presently…empty. I tore her away from me like a sticky skin, grimy film, guilty pleasure turned hollow sadness.
I’m glad she’s gone, but she was something, and now I’m nothing, stuck in a limbo, the subliminal, so sometimes I dig parts of her out of the trash, but they don’t fit anymore, and I’m left frustrated, waiting.
I stand in the violent chasm between day and night.
The mirror taunts me, “I’m a blank canvas,” it says, watching me peel myself into thin strips, piece by piece.
Maybe some filler under the eyes, some Botox in the forehead, is that a grey hair? What if I was skinnier, prettier, my eyes further apart, my lips perfectly symmetrical? What if I was whiter than that 50%?
Bitch, get the fuck out of LA.
And I run from place to place, desperate to escape my own body, to claw myself out of the bile of a bitter mind.
But when do I stop running?
Because what if I move to another city and I take all of this with me, and it’s always me. I’ll be lovable with the perfect face, and the perfect body, and the right clothes, and six figures, and when I never say the wrong thing and suddenly, I’m no longer a real person but my own fantasy so far removed from any humanity.
I despise it all, on days like these where a shitty $7 coffee and a cowboy killer are all that stand between me and the edge of the PCH.
I wonder what it’s like to be content, to not hunger for the entire universe. It’s 5:02 p.m. in Los Angeles, California, and the sun is setting and I don’t know who I am. ▲
