I feel tight, brittle, explosive, every single fiber of my body electric with possibility. I ache, straining, throwing myself against the walls of my own body, the inside of my head. The wind is cool, raging, sharp against my eyelids and the cells that edge my upper lip, and when I breathe too deeply I can feel my breasts fold hard against my rib cage, the lycra sheer, breathing with me, aching like my skin.
I had no sense of this body as my prison. I defied it, eked out a narrative against it, pledged myself to the endless spectrum and the desert of the in-between. But by mistake, I closed my eyes, and when I wasn't looking, this person erupted out of me--starving, desperate, relentless--and took up residence behind my eyes, his pulse beating in my wrists and at the hollow my neck, hungry, insistent, alive. I catch my breath, and the air he draws pools inside my throat.
Am I going crazy?
Where did I come from? Why am I here?
I slam my eyes shut, stare into the dark, look helplessly at that little girl. I wait against the heater, invisible, the promise of a future yet to come, while the teacher reminds her that Jesse is a boy's name, tells her if she insists upon a pseudonym she will need to add an "I". It was never "I." It's never been "I."
Who is this guy? What is he so hungry for? Why has he been so quiet? Why is he so afraid?
My narrator, my patron saint, my epigraph eternal. Your voice inside of mine, so clear and tangible that it echoes above my own in my own ears, so close against my tongue that I'd assumed for twenty years that it was mine.
I have no idea what I've become.
He has stolen my past. I flip through baby photos and his light burns behind my eyes, his hat nestled in my hair.
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