Perceptions

Image description: a figure runs through a dark blue theater.

My conscious streams 
A foggy contradiction
Sweaty palms on the floors, knees half crouched towards the ground 
Scrambling for unforeseeable conclusions
And becoming a culmination of what ifs 
Continuously shifting like calculated players on a chessboard

My thoughts feel juvenile, filtered, an inexperienced hallucination 
Grappling with the illusion of choice
The unhinged hands of my constant subconscious pulling, yanking, grabbing
Shoving me into materiality as an empty audience stares back 

Pristine velvet seats plush and untouched 
Uncertain from the lack of strange warmth and morally gray caricatures
These figures from my past carefully arranged my thoughts
My first chartered path of what I thought would be 
My first sense of self in the world 
I now continue to learn to unravel their entwined perceptions 
As new characters arrive and challenge the fluidity of self, my-self

Self-worth, self-desires, self-being 
These parts frequently trapped by gazes that are not my own 
Desperately trying to regain and establish my own identity 
While slowly unbecoming and deconstructing society’s assimilated mirage 

This fine line teeters, feeding my insanity 
Left with the wounds of unchangeability 
Self-doubt my new insatiable apparition 
My own binding phrase

Now the seats fill, warm with the multiple version of myself I can become
I am the audience feeling free and wanting to be reckless 
As I discover the rules I once loved no longer apply
I struggle for ways to define my own 
I am repulsed by the implications and standards of perfection 
Yet crave its validation all the same