Singing my Smile

I try to smile in my photos because I know you like that, me happy. I try to sing the right songs. I know you can hear me, in the shower. In the middle of my dreams I am always standing next to you, even the nightmares. I am usually walking away, walking too slow, never catching up with myself. Where am I going? Where have I been? Which part of me remembers what exactly was the point of all this. Of all this was there a destination, even intellectually. Was there a spot, the sweet spot between pretending and knowing.I'm not tall enough for my own good I think sometimes. Too wide for anyone's good.In my dream, I didn't get picked to be part of the team. I don't know what we were playing. If there was a ball involved or what color it was. It's true that I never got picked in elementary school, I never got picked for prom. So I started doing the picking. I picked you.Even though you found me, sitting by a tree, standing over a mausoleum of my own making. The Taj Mahal could not trump our dead dreams. These monuments we've built with our eyes are not as strong as we are. These places we roam in our dreams, the past, the evolution of love.Will you look at my face, when I'm not smiling? Will you say the right thing, when I'm not singing?When I put a pink scarf over my head and pray, will you understand me? This is who I am.I'm on my knees, worshipping something I don't know the name of. god didn't pick me, I picked god.Maybe it's the end of the world, or maybe it's our world ending.I say the right words in the wrong order. I'm mostly walking backwards, until I run into myself in the mirror and fall. I cut myself the other day, by accident and it didn't feel good, as the cutters claim it does. It felt sharp. And bad. Which one of us is bleeding?When I see blood, I see your face in the red liquid. What is honor? I ask you this because we don't have the same blood. I'm not smiling in this photo, where my hand is bleeding. I am feeling instead.Can you feel me through these words? Are you really standing there, somewhere in the universe, reading this?At what point am I writing this and you are reading this and we are one person, knowing this.Let's not pretend anymore that the blood I bleed, is not for you.nina