AN INVITATION
Truth isn’t the same thing as vulnerability.
The moment you look,
you begin creating.
You may have imagined a person while moving through the rooms.
That person may resemble me.
They may not.
Objects become evidence quickly.
A room becomes a life.
A story becomes an explanation.
I do this too.
We look.
We connect things.
We decide what they mean.
Sometimes we are right.
Sometimes we recognize only what we already know.
Confession asks for understanding.
But I am not confessing to you.
The rooms do not offer a complete person.
They offer traces.
Selected traces.
What you make from them belongs partly to the work
and partly to you.
Hiding has a choreography too.
Less obvious,
but still there.
I can stand naked
and still remain unseen.
Autobiography is not biography.
A life cannot be reconstructed from the evidence it leaves behind.
I can’t know what you felt from the way your body reacted.
But we try.
Words are easy to give away.
They create a wall
and leave an image to build from.
They allow me to hide the sound of my heart beating while I listen to yours.
You build from the image.
I’ll build from the sound.
Neither will be complete,
but we’ll both leave with something to carry home.
You aren’t trespassing.
I invited you.
Give me a name, if you need one.
I was raised in noise.
I’m fluent in it.
If you want to know me,
find me
when I’m quiet.