The Underwater World

I have two homes. And when I leave one, my persona sticks like tar to the other, so I can feel the sinews of my personas elongate, snap, and gurgle into another form that is more easy to live in for the time that I am there.

And with all this back and forth, I lost my shape, and lived scared of hardening beyond change.

I have been in Oklahoma for a month visiting my family, living in the skin sack of a 17 year old me, who is easily recognizable in our small town and shared like birds by aunties and old teachers, today’s darling in our old family name. The same house, wearing my sister’s shrunken tee shirts, able to drive down the streets with my eyes closed. This me, my mother’s song bird with a chip on my shoulder, looks good under the Southern sun. Dry, consistent, and in muted colors. I think you’d like her.

There is another me. My secret me, my me that I made, and that she likes. She? She. The one who shakes my bones gives me gills for her world. A world with mirrors all around and people who laugh at the same things I do. It is underwater, and from above, perhaps seen in slow motion and in silence. Those who can swim deep breathe air through an electric wire, which glows rainbow and gives nourishment.

There is a fish on the wire, spindly and wild eyed, caught with a hook that no one else can see. The fish looks like me. Swaying lifelessly in the water, afraid to move or be noticed. Watching these brave ones galavant on this same wire as a tightrope, flourish like a feather pen, tie as a scarf around their neck that looks marvelous. Mocking what imprisons me, but only to help me escape. They know I can’t move, but allow me to stay, because some of them shared this hook until they swam free. The vein of understanding between gay people. It’s the kinship, the shared experience of overcoming, that makes them all so full of life.

So I hang, hoping to catch a shedding emerald scale from the others, who shine so brilliantly together. Like jewels under spotlight in blackness, skinny and with rough hands, surviving off of the creativity of each other. I want to let go. I want to be friends with them. How can they be so free? To laugh loud, dance madly, and wear suits. I want to pin her down so I can really take a look, speak in tongues and finally eat the flame in my belly that roared since I was young.

But I am afraid.

Afraid of what people will say at home, at suspicions confirmed, of hurting the boys who loved me.

Are you a lesbian?

No, I mean maybe.

I always knew how to lie. How to dig holes in the sand where parts of my heart stayed- the heavy parts, so what was seen danced high and light and yellow in the air. I was brilliant, and I wasn’t gay. What happened to me if I slipped on my own pedestal? Slipped into the pool of thoughts I buried, so they invaded my open mouth and ears and eyes, and swallowed me whole.

I am afraid of being gay.

Until I met her.

In the world where I was nobody, stripped bare of reputation, and even of friends. I opened the windows in London, my other home, breathed in the damp soot smell of rain and felt glorifying emptiness to become my fantasy. To paint my face loud, like an actor in the gilded west end theatres. Hurl the knife that I used to mince my words into an old photo of myself. Kill the fear and shatter my old mould.

Kiss the girl.

Surrender to the chaos of a wave that envelops you, spinning and swirling in the water. I don’t know which way is up. But when the water settles, I can breathe.

And after some time, I can swim too.

And by swimming inside of her, inside her mind and body and devouring the curve of her hip and foot and neck, I found who I was looking for.

I found me, the black bead of me, my soul. Without pretension or protection, who now exists in that shimmering pool that is my community, living off art and making up for lost time. Lost time. I can’t believe I wasted anytime with her, or with me.