WARPAINT ETIQUETTE

kaitrokowski:

I am an artist. My happiness is not marketable. I choose it anyway. 

My mother says I was born in a loud room

where a curtain was the only amniotic sac separating us

from another woman and her child.

She tells me women used to saunter into the hospital room

at night, telling stories, sharing glasses of cranberry juice and

hospital food, laughing until the nurse shimmied in and slung her

hands on her hips. All while my mother stayed silent and softly 

bursting from her light blue hospital gown. I am sure I was cradled

carefully on her chest, listening to the myriad of sounds 

from this neighboring mother; her voice traveling into my heart.

Perhaps this is why I like a loud classroom. A loud child. A barking dog.

Perhaps this is where my voice comes from. Precise. Deep. Resistant.

If there is a sandman—if such a myth exists—perhaps he visited us

together in that Poughkeepsie hospital, and sprinkled the sand 

of loudness and justice and voice into my eyes, right next to

the spring mist touch of my own mother’s traits, mistaking 

these two mothers in one hospital room. Giving birth to my duality

and my latent confusion, my unawareness of where to place 

the hand during the national anthem. Chest or at the side?

But the sand man made no mistakes. He carefully flew into

the nursery ward that night. Gazed upon two mothers, and

dealt the cards from his silver hand.

Knowing that they both, somehow, were my own.