Most days I don’t feel my bangs on my forehead. Prickly hair tickling my skin. I don’t feel them until I look in the mirror and see the reality in front of me. Black strands against my face, pimpled and tan. Forced to reckon with a body that is mine. 

She’s been dancing, prancing, the slow swaying fall of a feather plucked by the wind from its tree. Learning a language that is not known to you and me. The tongue scalding, eye watering, eruption of spicy cuisine. The cheek lifting, stomach glimmering, witnessing a puppy lifting its snout to the breeze. The heart hurting, chest burning, the feeling of people who come and leave.  

Interpret. Interpret. Interpret. But who is this trickster in the mirror I see? And what could she do? Feel, see? All those things. Can she really? What does she mean?

No, but you and me, we can’t do those things. We don’t have the space to breathe, not under the weight of all the things in our brain. Imprisoned by thought, freedom suffocated. Most days, most days, I don’t feel my bangs on my face.

There is no room to dance anymore. No air to sing with. There are only words. Words walking spirals, circles, running on wheels inside of wheels. And I give into them. I let them trick me.

I’m learning to stop. See, the wind, it gets to me. In this city, it’s the one thing that ruins everything. A winter day warmed by the sun, invaded by blistering gusts of wind. My body gets thrown around by the weight of it all. Walking around, most days I’m afraid I’ll fall. So I rush home, trap myself inside. I block everyone else off. The wind is a traveler and most days I don’t let him enter. 

But outside, when I do decide to pause, something happens. A moment passes. I let him blow my hair out of my eyes, cool down my red hot ears, pierce me with his bellowing bass melodies. For a blissful minute freedom rings. I feel a cold song invading my brain.

And in bearing the wind, I realize the sun has come out again. My nose no longer bitter cold, my eyes no longer filled with water, I let the sun sink into my skin. 

At home in the mirror, I see her, the little trickster she can be. But also, the delicate being who is tired of only ever seeing, trying to find meaning. I have tricked myself, and tricked others, trying to understand a world that cannot be spoken, but sung, danced through, felt.