"Susanwhenshetries"
by O'er Clean Fresh Susan
Written Just Yesterday

It became essential that I be something other than I was

'Become the Chosen One, the answer to the prayer,' they whispered into the cabinets and closets, 'If not that, then try being something else.  Anything else.'

'
Speed terrified them
And they were fearful of the light.
It was essential that I be stopped.

They spotted me like a leopard its prey
Tracking my movements
With predatory eyes,
And began to teach me the ways of the night --

Be silent in the stillness of the night,
Be shadowless, in the absence of the light
See things in black and white and poorly [the moon cannot bear a rainbow],
Lose substance and become a dream,
A creature of the night,
A motionless, one-dimensional thing of substance that never changes,
A scholar perhaps, a saint, a lady,
Some static figment of imagination.

That I was so already all these things
While also a frenetic ignoramus, sinner and whore
Was more uncertainty, more mystery,
More unpredictability and variance
Than this household of petroliths could bear

Since they found they'd been turned to stone
There had to be a Medusa, and why not me?
I tried their patience.
Try as I might,
I couldn't fit myself into the Procrustrean bed of their fear-assuaging dreams.

Now I think I'll try being me.