undefined by Malena Mayell (16, Oregon)

i stand in the mirror and piece the fractures into a broken someone. i revel
in my own discontinuity; rippling and tumbling over the years, i shed layers

of my skin like a snake slithering into the dissolutions of an individual complex.
congruence peels away until i am left bare & naked of the same bright-eyed buoyancy

that used to mold me. how many times i've wished for a different identity, prayed i’d
wake up with the confidence i once had, maybe a heart that didn’t feel quite this

queasy. beneath the shadows of tainted perceptions, i declare soliloquies of acceptance,
my words ringing false to even my own ears. to love who i once was is far easier

than to accept these raw scars, these fingers coiling endless knots around pools
of insecurity, this mouth that hasn’t learned how to be louder than a hushed question

on the sidelines. my mind has adapted to the mesh & mold & intertwining of
a thousand other voices to devolve into something indistinguishable. but the memories

don’t lie; my radiance is palpable through the muddled fog of old evocations &
shimmering photographs, an illustration of childhood delight that now stands

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