You do not know me anymore.
I did use that name, once,
And the one I tell you now is not false, per se,
But how do I explain the alienness, the alterity,
Of that under which I do not filter myself,
That only known to the closest of total strangers,
Those for whom my sudden changes and discontinuities
May be extrapolated free of context to a coherent whole,
To whom my transitoriness is a single existential rule
Rather than the exception to mandatory humanity,
And a hiatus becoming indefinite a passing minor noticing
Rather than a cause for concern or consequence?
--Even now, I steal away to a transplanted sanctuary
Desperate to find some continuity,
Only able to find it by pilfering from my former self.
I try to keep to lies of omission, you see,
But I keep finding myself in closets I never knew existed
And precedents I took for granted,
Not thinking of my shortfalls for my own sanity.
Child of a goth and a (former) punk, grandchild of a DJ and a hippie.
Janis was already at her peak by my age,
And what do I have to show for this youth
But failed education and middling medication?
I think to myself that perhaps without the latter it would've been different,
But I can't lie--I wouldn't have made it.
I couldn't cope joyfully like you,
Couldn't turn my world into a movement, a sound, a statement, an art--
It's just so loud, and I'm so, so tired.
I shunned my peers for a future that never came,
And by the time I realized it, it was too late.
Situational, generational--who's to say?
We were too busy treading water to swan-dive so beautifully,
And the seas only ever keep rising.
All I can hope for is to let the water run hot from the tap and cold on my nerves
And generate enough steam that I don't have to face myself in the mirror.