Mercy Wore All My Faces

I’ve worn so many versions of myself I forget which one’s the original copy. The quiet girl in class. The clever one at parties. The flirt. The fixer. The one who never texts first. Each a costume I forgot to wholly remove. Sometimes I think the real me slipped out the back door during high school and no one noticed. Sometimes I think there’s no real me. I’m not sad. Just tired. Tired of curating, composing, surviving each performance. I want to be boring. Be messy. Be real enough to disappoint someone. And still be loved after. Memory's mercy is a marvelous kind of madness.