raw materials

i am made of shattered glass.

of scrambled words.

of ruinous pieces.

a broken mirror,

an unfinished poem,

a blurred picture.

an incomplete whole.

an unsolvable puzzle.

my face is a mirror broken in half 

stuck together with an expired glue. 

my smile almost mirrors my mother’s, 

but my eyes belong to my father.

too much of both

and also too little.

my soul is a blurred picture

so much to see, yet so little revealed.

they tell me to stop being emotional,

but that i’m also too cold.

to speak up,

but to stop saying such rude words.

burning inside me is a fiery rage like my mother’s father,

yet at the same time an icy glare rests on my eyes like her mother.

it’s the way my father’s mother passes down her alto voice,

but when i speak, it is his father’s words that come out of my lips.

chunks of them, all mixed in a little body.

too much of everyone else,

and too little of me.

i am wrapped in parts of torn fabric,

sewed together with a bent needle.

indonesian but also part arabic

and part chinese

and part dutch

and part armenian.

too pale for my javanese cousins,

too dark for my dutch cousins.

and somehow i can’t be anything in between.

too many parts that can’t connect.

too many pieces that don’t fit.

all stuffed in the same mind.

in the same body.

in the same soul.

part everything and part nothing.

an incomplete flawed whole. an unsolvable complicated puzzle.

a beautiful enigma.