shambling phantom

it's not an easy thing, knowing where to delimitate the lives that pass you by from the one you're living. i hear her name in passing, and for several seconds, the syllables eviscerate the last drop of will pushing my feet forward.

and yet. in this reality, i am one who must keep walking.

i spend good portions of the day, asking what things are supposed to mean, and trying to step into the role of Cassandra. Divine from the gods what must be, and how it may yet come to pass.

then, there's the should have beens others project on me. just because they belong to somebody else don't mean they're a walk in the park. the weight of what somebody expects you to be can be soul-crushing when you're not well-defined in yourself. and even then, it's so easy, always, for your fingers to slip.

i've thought often about disappointing you. the weight that could never compare to disappointing my own father. and still. what an unusual phrase. you're disappointed in me.

as in, i do not align with your projection of what i should be.

and the concerning truth is, we're ready to transform ourselves to fit all sorts of other stories in the name of being let into the pack.

it's not simple. my mere understanding that you are not, in fact, conversing with me, but with your projection of me does not inform me on how to continue the conversation. you have no right to tell me who i ought to be, no more right than i have to conform. what's identity but a constant negotiation with the others who surround us?

in the interest of avoiding ghosts, you must first disengage. it's not something we want to do, especially when the projection belongs to someone close or dear to us. the only consolation i can offer is, it will inevitably be harder lingering in someone else's projection, than following your own notions of who you ought to be for this finite time on the planet.

staying here, for the weak, can be chaos. you slowly start slipping, until all that remains of the person others once knew are slivers. after all, who can objectively claim my idea of who i ought to be is better than yours? and have i really reached an age where i can stop taking offers?

yes. i know what it is to take offers, and disappear.

if i don't disappear, then the love will. i never signed on as puppeteer, am unsure how to manouver the strings of this foreign mouth in such a way that you will find pleasing. in simple words, i do not know how to be what you expect me to be, and if i insist on refusing, then what choice do i have but to live as a woman in secret, an other from the woman in your mouth?

all, lives i could have lived. the woman desired. the broken doll. the woman calling foreign names down the street, wishing the past might come back to her. i've in me potential to be and become many things. when i feel myself becoming immersed into somebody else's reality for too long, i reach for the quiet, the place where i don't need to explain being myself again.

how do i speak to your projection of me? i don't. must trust her to invent her own words, and make her own exit. perhaps i myself didn't disappoint my father, but simply couldn't be the daughter he imagined me to be, and then, is it my fault or his? is it simply a mismatch? must we inevitably fly by one another?

or can we sit here, speaking foreign tongues, and still shape some semblance of cognition?