Do you remember your grand entrance? The scaled seats fill with town members into that theater, you wait behind red velvet, and suddenly like all theater majors nightmares realize you cant remember your lines? Thats probably why babies cry upon entering this world. They just werent readily prepared. Oh, but weve all heard the story. I was born of a mother sensitivity and a father sarcasm. Weaned on defensive humor and washed in nervous laughter, i began to embody my character. The plot develops: i played in a sanbox stocked from the beaches of ambiguity where the shores bearn no marker in particular and the constant whispers of an ocean tide seems to mutter your name. The worms i ate were imported from a monestary in indonesia, and there i devoured my silence. They wore soot robes and bowed their heads (or was it their tails?), spending all day inching in parrallel form, converting my one person playpen into a kempt zen garden. Thus i grew, with certain detatchment, anxious habits, an excess of words and too few spaces to stoe time. My ubringing surges to the tips of my persona the further i move away from it. With this continual restructuring of my internal feng shuei, some of the staples get pushed into a back room or kept in storage, for the time being.

¿sos una chica debil¿ his question was hardly spiteful, its genuine nature dances around his bluegrey iris, the opening act with an extended curtain call for a show ive caught snippits of, but only from back stage. He stared, posed, lids refusing to shut even for the slightest of moments until they sense my response. Si, puede ser, the audience claps. I feel dizzy, not the thrilling version of the sense but the kind that makes you nauseated and give you the shits. Its a dizzy pepto bismal could extinguish, or a dizzy missing its partner and with a few shots of whiskey would dance a dizzying pomerade around my feet. Dizzy not from my own spinning, absolved of all volition, but yanked by my big toes and tossed into the air, i tuck into fetal position and bounce across the hands of thousands crowded at the now rock concert. No, its not weakness, but the constant sensation, or perhaps reminder, that i belong to everyone else. Theirs to watch, to welcome, to whisper, to harrass. Their to touch, to shove, to fondle, to fight. Theirs to call chiquita, amorcita, mona, nena. And theirs to have, to hold, to know. In a week and a half i morph from one object to the next: a memory, a roof, a notch on a belt buckle, a miror, a love scene from a 1920s flick where no matter how cold hearted i inevitably wilt into the arms of my savior, a philosophy article to be digested and reintepreted, a new experience. So i decided to probe said weakness, take a scaple to its pulsing limb, peel its layers like string cheese, letting each one dangle alone and vulnerable before its consumed. Ahh, this piece is burnt, a flavor of lingering tobacco on a dive bars upholstered seats. This one spoiled, for it sat too long in the sun. Mmm, this section tender and young, fresh enough to be picked but lacking in profundity like a cheap wine. Part by part i tear and swallow, noting where the weakness stikes my pallate, sound humming off my teeth, my molars sing baratone. And the weakness twangs and wanes in achord and it strips itself bear until the curtain rises and it stands, knock-kneed and naked on that broadway theater stage. Lights hit, front and center, and the audience gasps in unison as all sensitivity, weakness, vulnerability, and feel seeps out and files into the pores of the observers. Y? Bueno? Soy debil? Who isnt.