I am

I am the cigarette that you lit
The glassy night where the wind bit your face
As you inhaled everything that could have possibly been bad for you,
Culminating in amber embers
As you told me that you were leaving for the frontlines of war
For the real world

I am
That girl you leave behind
Before you leave for the frontlines of war
Of the real world
I won’t wait for you, I won’t
I promised

And you never bothered to realize
That cutting it off for my sake was for your sake
That numbing emotion doesn’t mean it goes away
It’s just displaced

I am
The daughter you left at home alone
The adulterous wife

And I mean
You can’t really blame me
Since you were never really there anyway
I just wanted love
And I found it in selling myself

I am
the news anchor at 6 pm
That broadcasts destruction and genocide
And statistics of your deaths and political scandals
Calm and cool and collected

I am water wars
Being fought on the wrong side of the map
Where Israeli children play on the side of the wall with lush grass
And Palestinians starve of thirst opposite them

I am graffiti on the bathroom wall reading
Free Palestine,
Israel, now only $29.95

I am
History written by the winner
The conquerer
The imperialist

I am
The comfort woman you found in the war zone
Give me food and shelter, I’ll call you john then never call again
Because there is no obligation to care about me, is there?

I am
A pathological liar
A living satire of the earth
A walking contradiction

And you never bothered to realize
The complexities of my chronological mistruths
That I fed you to cover up
My own insecurities
Was the same intricate cynical web of different personalities I weave

I am
History reworked
In the eyes of the marginalized
The left behind
The poor, the oppressed, the downtrodden speaking for themselves

Alternative modes of thought
Of the modernity and progress that exists beyond
The mainstream

I am
The America you never bothered to realize existed