Serena Malcolm

I accidentally introduced my colleagues to the real me, and now, apparently, they’re scared of me.

I have become a monster in their eyes, and I suppose it should come as no surprise,

When I’ve been wearing a disguise for the past five years,

They were scared by the raised voice and puffed chest,

And by the profanities that left a mouth that they’re used to seeing smile,

They were scared by the sudden Exit Stage Left,

And my subsequent brush with death as I felt pressed to play with traffic,

They were scared by the graphic dissociative state that spewed out hate in their direction,

When my usual predilection is for a more carefree disposition,

The Life and Soul

The bright-eyed ray of sunshine that everybody knows,

That gives and gives and gives because she doesn’t know how to say no,

They were scared that this other version would –what? Gobble them whole?

A Frankenstein’s monster whose hidey-hole is usually beneath the skin they believed was so thick

That their microaggression, and condescension, and reprehensible reprehension could never even graze it,

But amazingly, their assiduity finally cut through all the layers until I was bare, and raw, and frayed,

Until they revealed the monster that they all made,

Yet they are the ones who get to be afraid?

So as it turns out, I owe them an apology for my apoplexy, for my misery, for my anxiety,  

Caused by years and years of bigotry, emotional neglect, and sexual abuse,  

Compounding immutable core beliefs that I’m unloved and of no use to anyone,

Yet I must be the one to bend the knee and heal their hurt,

Once again, putting Other People’s Feelings first,

But first, I must re-cage the beast, un-ring the bell, turn the toast back to bread,

Re-lock the Pandora’s box that lives rent free inside my head,

Become instead a performing monkey with a windup key,

That shuts her mouth and just nods to agree with everything they throw at me,

So that they can once again feel at ease, I must become living breathing Kintsugi,

Because they don’t really want what’s really me,

They can’t live with who I’ve been, nor who I can sometimes be,

And to some degree, I can see their ploy.

Because what real use is a broken toy?