I Am a Storyteller Who Never Tells the Whole Story

I tell my grandparents the story of the performer

who tried colored contacts for the first time

an hour before she was due onstage. After too long

acting as contact doula for her left eye, I asked her to look

at the vanity lights and tell me what she saw.

She described the same golden halo with striking rays

that I see with my own left eye.

I diagnosed her with astigmatism

and sent her onstage beautifully unfinished, one eye brown, one white.

I don’t tell them

that this story is about a high concept drag queen.

While she was doing haunted nun makeup,

I was vetting her sermon, for a show called

Take Me to Church.

I know the line between irreverence and offensiveness,

unlike the theology student, dressed as Salome, who will say anything.

Salome invited me backstage so my thrift-store lace tablecloth

could grace the altar. It got stained with fake blood.

I complained, but I love my scarlet-flecked souvenir.

I don’t tell my coworkers at Catholic school

that you can feel God at a drag show that criticizes and exorcises

the cruelties done in God’s name.

I don’t tell them much.

They know that I write, but not the name I write under,

and that I would rather be in nature.

I play the part of the fun substitute well when I don’t have a migraine.

I try to fit. I wear the same black and gold damascene cross

everywhere—it’s the kind of bold that makes people project

whatever they want on me.

I’m not in the business of disillusioning people I depend on.

I don’t tell my friend everything this job takes out of me on our hike.

He gets enough from a verbal sketch, and it’s my turn to listen.

The most purple violets I have ever witnessed

rest in a bed of the most vibrant green

and I interrupt him to make sure he sees. He stops to see.

I apologize for my ADHD and he gently replies that

he wouldn’t expect anything else from me.

I do tell him I appreciate him. I don’t tell him that some colors

are so bright that they make me feel God.

When I went to the Met on a college trip, I floated through the hallways

of the religious exhibition, barely recognizing the subjects,

high on gold leaf and ultramarine seen in the flesh for the first time.

Staring at those flowers, I wanted to let him see

through my eyes and bring him with me.

I don’t tell people that I write

because I want to do the impossible

and bring them with me.