Maybe, I am an ox. I work too hard, I work way too hard. So big, and bulky, and ugly, who could call such an animal their favorite? So ugly. They’re beasts of burden, you know. Meant to do the job that you can’t, and can shoulder around 6,000 pounds. Shoulder muscles that churn under immense pressure, and when I look down at myself in the shower, I can’t help but always compare my legs to those of a horse or an ox. Bruised knees and too much muscle, even a big scar from a bloody plow-I swear I carry 6,000 pounds every day. They were domesticated over 10,000 years ago by some of the first civilizations on earth. But I think they forgot to tame me.

Maybe, I am a hummingbird. I am drawn to boldness, and sweetness, and it will be my unravelling. Falling head over heels over wings for shiny skin. And confidence that drips like nectar. Hummingbirds are so light, I’m surprised they even exist at all. If it is so light, and you could blow it out of your hands with one breath; what’s to stop you from doing the same to me? They’re too hyperactive to make friends. They just make enemies. Oh, if you could only see inside my heart that I swear beats a thousand times a minute. It feels so much all at once. People tell me it’s an endearing thing, and I think to myself Now I’m almost sure they have never felt anything like this before. If they had, they would simply cry with me and say nothing at all. 

Maybe, I am a lion. Lionesses really are savage creatures if you’ve ever seen a picture of them with blood all over their snouts. In heat, they’re wild, and so I am. But I wear a smile that says, It’s all good. When in reality, just like a lion in heat, my insides are churning, bloody and wild, and there is nothing anyone can do to change any of it, I am sure.

Maybe, I am a fox. Foxes have such bad reputations, and I wonder what they ever did to deserve such a rap. Sometimes people see my face and they think easy. I never meant to turn suspicious and sly like apples turn sour, but spend enough time being pelted by sticks on the nose, being chased away, and it’s no wonder the whole of it hasn’t just fallen to pieces yet. Aren’t we all just trying to survive? Foxes have to eat. Where did we get off thinking our rights were so much more important than any other starving bellies in the world just because we’re human? Foxes are still paying for the sin that is them simply being alive, and I swear every night, I am too-tossing and turning under painfully silken skin itching with the knowledge that I don’t deserve anything at all.

I could compare myself to a thousand animals, but maybe it’s just because I’m too scared of my own humanity that I won’t. How, so like the ox, I like to tear up the ground I walk on and leave it all cracked and broken behind. How, so like the hummingbird, my heart is one beat away from bursting like a balloon. How, so like the lion, I can let no one tell me stop! once I’ve tasted blood. How, like the fox, it wasn’t one person but years of seeing my own kind be killed for their softness that turned me stone-faced to sob stories.

Who can love these things? All these shortcomings. How do you embrace the roughness, the hyperactive, the blood dripping from my chin, the callousness of it all?! Tell me. I’m looking for my humanity in the wrong places, trying to make sense of something I should  have never gone looking for in the first place.

~J

This piece was inspired by Sierra DeMulder’s poem “I Have Mistaken Myself”