Self-Portrait
She, at first sight,
is small and strange.
She has a fuzzy frizz of hair
slung about on her head like a madman’s brushstrokes
eyes dull and bluish grey
glasses and a generally ugly face.
She opens up to kind strangers
because all her friends are sick of her problems
and the strangers listen
since her predicament is trivial and new to them
and she spills her soul to them
because she knows she shouldn’t be feeling so worried, empty, lost
but she still needs somebody to lean on.
She realised nobody was coming to save her
when she was fourteen,
realised she’d forever be everybody’s second choice
when she was ten,
fell in love for the first time at age six
and just keeps tumbling and tumbling
regardless of the fall
because it’s the sweetest thing she’s known.
She is more musical than precise and skilled
but this makes her pieces, her compositions
glow from her soul
like a joyful, passionate voice.
She has a friend who writes slash fiction, and she reads it
even though she knows she doesn’t get the fan-jokes
because it is her escape, to know that she is not alone
in wanting to be wanted, and translating it into words
and yet she is still ashamed
because she isn’t really into any bands
so with that being said,
who does she write about?
She would rather die
than break a heart,
cut herself,
or eat a tomato.
She listens so hard to what boys say
and analyses their every action
because it’s fun.
She is fascinated by sentences, shadows, shapes
the M-rated concept of imaginary numbers
and how depression can destroy a smiling soul.
She philosophises
and tries to make her own style,
her own sense of humour
her own synasthaesia.
She writes songs
that the subject will never hear
and arranges music
into cartwheels on a summer’s day.
She wants to
write something that makes people think,
play something that makes someone cry with happiness,
kiss a girl before she dies
and marry a boy who is deeper than shallow.
She thinks she’s pretty, sweet,
because the alternative would make her sad,
and she never says a word on the subject anyway
because despite her hopes she knows what they’d say.
She wants to discover
how we hear songs in our heads
how we see memories in our minds
if she does nothing else of note in her life.
She was fourteen when she lost her joyous, oblivious way,
but she was fourteen when a boy told her that he liked her,
and she was fourteen when she and her friends took a stand for something right.
She runs from romances she started herself
and regrets it deeply
but she is not a failure.
She is a phoenix, bipolarly sinking and soaring.
She is trying to do the best she can in everything.
She is a girl with a clicky pen and a shimmerful makeup brush,
and a story to tell.
She is curious, argumentative, broken, trivial, confused, sweet, happy-making.
She is simple and imperfect and lovely,
and as the camera slaps her with bright white light
she wishes you well.