Coming Out

How easy, to look down on those Rocky Mountains and lose every single word. To get in a car at the airport, breathe fresh air, stretch limbs and emotions until no ink remains to be painted. I did not grow up in this valley, I never lived in this house, but it is home. It is where my parents exhale and, as such, it is a place where my soul can rest as well. And while it does, I have nothing to say.

And still we sit there, over crab legs and clams and another glass of wine, and speak of the Heart. 27 years of being their daughter and they still do not know who I am. Or they know, and I am simply the one pretending otherwise.

27 years of being taught to expect only the best, only the extraordinary, from oneself and from others, and now the question did we leave you empty-handed?

Answers are hard to come by, but sometimes I think they were not the point in the first place. I balance along the narrow beam, eager to please but so anxious to hold on to the last safe space, the last fortress of solitude where the person who is me can fit without qualms.

If I one day hope to have People read my words, I will have to let them read me. If we one day hope to have people truly know us, we will have to let them see us.

I drink water to alleviate the rush, to combat the altitude. May whispers in the margins, but the Mountains tremble with snow. In a guest room the size of half our apartment on Morton, I crawl into the furthest corner, I sleep heavily and dream bizarre circus dreams with swings. Exhausted, by the quiet, the dark, and the endlessly familiar. I assess the head on my shoulders; I contemplate the leap.