Unraveled
10:40 AM
This poem was published in the 2018 edition of Myriad, El Camino College’s literary magazine.
Look at me now
Who do you
want me to be?
Who do you
expect me to be?
A serpent catches a glimpse of me
through a stream of smoke
It fills in the blanks of my bronze outline
with a premade projection
A portrait of fragility
An easy target
An oppressed soul
A stranger holds me at length
She sees my skin
a rough sea of melanin
my hair, a zoo of kinks and coils
and insists that they be loosened
tamed
unraveled
A lab coat puts me under
an outdated lens
He sees a paradox, a misprint
As if I’m an outlier
of some universal truth
I’m Schrödinger’s cat
in a golden brown box
all wrapped up in charcoal string
Reach out and open me up
You’ll find that I
have no desire to be
unraveled
See me now
I am
someone you’d never
imagine me to be
***
For more info about Myriad, visit: http://myriad.elcamino.edu/
To view the entire 2018 edition, visit: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1V5_R_xIKMhhLmziPtFivk5IdH-qC5YaT/view
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