Ren Powell, Poet | Playwright | Teaching Artist

I am not a creature constructed
for journal-writing.

Is it odd that I am just now discovering this? I need to talk to someone. Living or dead. Part of me is concerned that this means I am defined by others. After all, we use one voice speaking to one person, and another when turning to someone else’s ear and embrace. Multitudes, for the many we love in so very differing ways.

*
I have a flash of memory of my mother angry with my, eavesdropping on my telephone conversation with a friend: “Why can’t you be that person when you are talking to me?”
There were so many answers to that question.
I think I shrugged.
At 16.
*

Who am I when I am not interacting with someone specific? That quiet watcher who tilts her head in puzzlement. Like a dog: taking interest, but not making up a story to imagine the world into meaning. It is a peaceful place. But lonely. Maybe that is why dogs curl up tightly against each other in musky dens?

Why Leonard presses his skull into mine until I have to distract him with a pig’s ear or a bit of cheese.

This desire than needs an object.

I should have been a dancer.