I’m not creative enough to be the artist, and I lack the elegance it takes to be the muse.
Somehow, the inventive talent that runs through my ancestors has bypassed my frond of the family tree. My cracked, calloused hands struggle enough in an attempt to piece my own life back together without the pressure of designing the portrait of someone else’s. The shaking doesn’t stop. I tremble under the strain of imitating a vision until the canvas is smudged and blackened, accomplishing nothing but a duplication of the unsightly, unfortunate figure glaring back in the mirror.
I despise being on the receiving end of that talent, as well. What I cannot conceal under shapeless layers of fabric only becomes enhanced under a light I do not wish to see myself in. My hair falls unevenly into unruly strands. No amount of chapstick keeps me from biting the skin from my lips, leaving lipstick-like blood in its wake. The makeup I still don’t know how to use doesn’t even cover the freckles under my eyes that I can’t clear away. Neither the upscale colored pencils nor the softest blending brush will smooth away my defects, painting me in the pristine way I’ve dreamed of. The only useful supply, as I’ve learned, is the eraser.
I’m not intelligent enough to be the archaeologist, and I haven’t lived enough to become the fossil.
My grades illustrate the picturesque perfection that’s associated with the beginning of the alphabet. But those considerable letters on my laptop can’t be chipped away to reveal the shaded craters below my eyes and the glassy finish that coats them with a night too late and a blank page. The footage behind the scenes remains in reserve no matter how much I want to prove my effort. I’ve gotten comfortable. Comfortable with being okay, and comfortable with my position—comfortable enough to hesitate in taking that next step.
Even through adversity, my life stays exactly as it sounds: alive. I have yet to take my hardships with me into the muddied hole that I’ve been digging myself into the past couple of years; I have yet to torch myself under the flame of my own embarrassment until only my blackened bones are left to signify what little I’ve lived. It’s true, there’s much to do before I earn my right to sit eternally in that hole I’ve made, but what’s the point if, centuries in the future, there won’t be someone to search for what remains?
I’m not bright enough to be the shooting star, but I will forever be the person who wishes on them.
With my personal deficiency in creativity, elegance, intelligence, and flourishing life, I’m the last person to take influence from. The rare piece of advice I give is quality, but I still don’t have the self-respect to listen to the words that come from my own mouth. At no point in time have I ever outshined the rest of the stars in the sky, and no one will ever depreciate their dignity to look up to me.
But, my eyes gaze endlessly at everything the sky has to offer, constantly fixed on the endless possibilities of the unknown. For me, there’s a universe up there where I’m the Van Gogh of our time, where I’ve uncovered the artifact that changed history. I become spellbound and can’t look away. It’s not my subconscious goals that make their home in the stars, it’s the prospect of potential I imagine being born into—constellations upon constellations mapping out everything I could’ve been and everything I’ll never be.
