When I first read Oscar Wilde, he told me
You know more than you think you know,
and I laughed.
Because isn't part of growing up precocious suppressing intuition?
The only thing I'm gifted at is listening,
but the obedient never win, which is ironic.
I think I grew in all the wrong ways;
became smarter and colder and less feeling,
sadder and wiser and still reeling.
My grandmother wanted me to be beautiful, so she rubbed turmeric on my skin
but what if all she accomplished was making it paper thin?
He instructed me to
Never say a moral thing, never do the wrong thing,
and I smiled.
It sounded like something my mother would say,
but, oh god, what would she say if she saw me now?
The favorite daughter, the man of the house,
the golden child, the silent mouse;
the epithets pile up and somehow, never amount.
I rise angry, die screaming but won't mind
if you rob me of the only thing that's ever been mine.
I'm thirteen and thirty at the same time,
and think maybe my complicity is a crime,
even if I'm also the victim.
I'm learning you can be wronged and wrong,
which makes vengeance hard.
But wasn't I the girl built to do hard things?
He warned me that
It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution,
and I cried.
"I don't think I'm built for this," I whispered
The dreams I had created in my fishbowl bedroom no longer seemed real
and I don't want to float until I feel it
because what if I never do?
The only part of me not currently withering is my glare
and maybe all is fair in friendship and academia,
but I wouldn't know; I'm bad at both.
When I next met Oscar Wilde, he told me
You know more than you think you know,
just as you know less than you want to know.
And that, that my dear, is the whole damn tragedy.
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