"Untitled" by Valencia Gulley
Untitled
By Valencia Gulley
I’m rolling fixed dice for my life.
It’s not meant for me to win.
I’m meant to lose. Yeah, lose.
Losing is so comfortable.
If I were to win, I wouldn’t know how to act.
I’ve won once, don’t ask me when because I don’t
remember. If you ask me when I lost I would be
able to tell you. I can remember every loss as if it’s
all imported into a dvd and I’m able to watch every
scene to make sure I get every detail but instead
the dvd is a secret memory department that I seem
to remember without effort in remembrance.
Back to the point, I’ve won something once, that
isn’t of importance, and the feeling I’ve felt was
unrecognizable. It was almost painful how
auto-piloted I get when I win.
People send out their thank you hugs and smiles,
but after I want to cry. I want to go to a dark empty
room and ugly cry into my hands until my nose
runs. Only then will I find a bathroom hidden from
the congradulators, and blow the winning snot into
the tissue. I get super red when I ugly cry so a little
splash of cold water and a couple of practiced fake
smiles in the mirror will prepare me to go back into
the suffocating crowd.
When I win, I disassociate myself from my body; in
a caterpillar-becoming-butterfly scenario instead it's
the other way around. I'm the dried up crunchy
shell and the facade is the butterfly.
On the other hand, when I lose I never leave my
body. I'm 100 percent intact. I’m trapped in my body
when I want to leave and away when I want to stay.