Am I the teller
Of a story?
I try to grasp it with both my hands
And all my mind
But it often,
Inexplicably,
Floats away.
Sometimes I feel
Like a story
Of the tellers.
Who was I
Before they gave me my name?
If I didn’t choose it,
It is anything
but mine.
Indeed, who am I
Without my name?
A lost pronoun
Irreplaceable and mourning
the loss of a word.
Symbols, they say
Are for the symbol-minded
But I’ve questions in mine.
Are the questions my own
If I am not?
I feel
Like a tune
Composed with care,
But not yet written
And still unheard.
Real,
But not quite.
There was a queen long ago
Who was birthed
In the mind of a poet.
When they wrote her down,
They made her history.
History can be forgotten.
So can music,
If it isn’t put to pen.
I feel
Like a gamepiece:
Wooden, painted,
In the hands of another,
Taking a two-step
And then one at a time,
To be sacrificed at the altar
From which a More Important One
Can be saved.
Indeed, I feel
Like I could be pawned
For something
Of more immediate value
In the future.
They never call it
A herd of soldiers
Although that it is.
I feel
The world is beautiful –
But feeling
(The world is beautiful)
Is not the same
As knowing
(The world is beautiful)
And know I not:
The tellers never
Wrote it for me.
You see, the story
Can only read
What is written for it.
The story never writes
(The world is beautiful)
Itself.
[The title and primary metaphor for this poem is inspired by the literary criticism on Lewis Carroll’s Through The Looking Glass. ‘The Queen’ refers both to Alice Liddell and to Malik Muhammad Jayasi’s Padmavati, who has recently become subject to national controversy.]
