Person

Why can’t I be a mermaid, or a phoenix burning bright? Why can’t I be a moon-white rose? Or a starless night? Why can’t I be a candle flame, know nothing of the dark? Why can’t I be a hurricane? Why can’t I be a lark?

Why must I be a person, a dying, one-life thing? Why must I be a person, and not a set of wings? Why can’t I be a longed-for kiss, the touch against a cheek? Why can’t I be a secret, desolate and bleak? Why can’t I be a promise, or a whisper, or a lie? Why can’t I be a memory, and a single gleaming tear? Why can’t I be a nightmare, brought to life by fear?

Why must I be a person, alone inside my bones? Why must I be a person, and my future be a crone? Why can’t I be an orchestra of lacquered violins? Why can’t I be the clamour of all the deadly sins? Why can’t I be a river, or a humming hive of bees? Why can’t I be an ocean? Why can’t I be the trees?

Why must I be a person, breakable as glass? Why must I be a person, and own a person’s heart? Why can’t I shed my girlish skin, and change my shape at will? Why can’t I share a stranger’s mind, or heal them when they’re ill? Why can’t I take a sip of time and walk the distant past? Why can’t I kill the rule that says no good things ever last? Why can’t I turn a man to swine, or feathers into gold? Why must I be a person, and do only as I’m told?