The Dream
Family gathering, extended.
I said goodnight.
No one answered.
I shouted it louder.
Silence.
I asked one of them,
“What’s your problem?”
“You’re a mess in skin.
I don’t like you.”
They couldn’t explain why.
They’d just decided.
I pleaded with my parents,
my cousin:
“Are you gonna let them
get away with this?”
Silence.
I raged.
I smashed things.
I hit them.
I threatened:
“If you ever
invite them again,
I will cut you
off.”
They’d proved
their point.
I walked away.
A mess
behind me.
I boarded
a boat
in a wetsuit.
I was off
to meet friends.
I felt a fraud.
I had a monster
inside.
The Meaning
The social exile that happens in families— not for what you’ve done, but for what you represent.
Erasure is harm. Silence is a weapon. And it’s complicit.
The desperation to be witnessed. The rage that erupts when you’re made invisible— and somehow you’re the problem?
I didn’t cause the wound. But I raged.
And that gave them their proof.
Now I walk away with the shame.
Am I the monster, because I roared at those who poked me?
What Lingers?…
What if monster is just the name given to anyone who finally roars?
What if invalidation wounds louder than anger ever could?
Marginalia
This dream takes me closer to the bone than My Breast and the Boy, where I was only the witness. Now I’m in the front-row seat of my own mess — and there’s no escaping my humanness again. Much like Flawed but Trying: When triggered, I roar.
The work I’ve done on my astrological ancestry gives me a sense of where this originated, and why it’s been passed to me — to rage on behalf of ancestors who couldn’t. I’m not shirking responsibility for my own actions. I’m just learning that What I Carry Isn’t All Mine.
