"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.