Tag
3, 2, 1 TAG YOU'RE IT!
I remember hearing on the playground at the age of nine
Lord only knows how much I dreaded this game
The boy next to me tagged the other girl to his left
She is it.
The kids repelled from her as if she was contagious
but it did not matter because
she was it.
Back to me.
I felt my lungs close up as I heard the games name echo throughout the air.
I could not believe that I would now have to run endlessly for,
my life?
I prayed as I ran that nobody would notice me
they would not see how I maneuvered around the swings
or ducked under the slides
because I did not want to be found out.
I did not want to be it.
She was it.
They laughed and mocked her
They stuck out their tongues
Blew spit in her direction
her essence,
merely an island with no land in sight
A solitude that transcends the finite.
I did not want to be alone.
I mean I'm only nine
I haven't been here long
I wanted to be accepted.
So I watched her,
as she ran
and ran
and ran
hoping to escape her fate,
hoping that she'd convince them to love her before it's too late.
But everyone found comfort in their identity,
their commonality,
their unity,
what they found comfort in was their uniformity.
Everyone knew that if they avoided her
they would not have to take on her burden
of difference.
Back to me.
I saw myself in the girl
as she ran for freedom,
as she ran for acceptance,
as she ran for love.
Because she had lost it all when
she became it.
But became is the past tense of become
which is defined as "beginning to be"
and I felt that who I was "beginning to be"
was worse than it.
I had been tagged at birth.
I had been tagged by a God you say hates me.
So, I run.
and I have been running for such a long time
because nobody was willing to stop and reconsider that
maybe this is wrong,
that maybe lov-game position does not define personhood,
that maybe forcing assimilation on a child
destroys them to the core,
that maybe,
difference is the foundation of unity.
But we are back to me.
And I am still nine
and I do not understand these possibilities
because I am still running,
running hoping that I do not have to face the other girl,
because if I stop
I will be it.
and the kids on the playground will run
from me.
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