Audience

The book is shut before I speak. I see it in half your faces.
Woman, am I your competition?
Have you judged the ease of my life with a quick measure of my hips?
You, intellectual, do I look too young and sweet to volley theories with you?
Would you dismiss my voice before it sounded?
I am a blonde – am I a bimbo?
Or is it reading Feynman that stirs my pulse?
I am not obese – so have my days been easy?
Or have I been used and never loved?
Or can you guess I was the ugly one in high school -
The one you would have taunted and teased?
My hair is long, my eyes softly blue – am I a romantic?
Or do I spew my primal rage against a heavy bag
Slugging deep into the leather and sawdust
Until the rafters of the barn shake with my bottomless fury.
May body has taken it’s blows and given me a few of it’s own.
My body scars and bleeds and reels in its toxic confusion,
showing more age inside than your grey-haired grandma.
My mind is a constant chaotic explosion of thought, curiosity, epiphany and vision.
My heart a blackened, beaten thing that still would gather its charred remains-
Still turn itself over and find a soft spot to offer up without reserve.
I offer my words, an open book.
But you stop at the cover I didn’t design.
You will see the illusions, the projections of your own eyes.
I hope you like what you see,
Because it reflects only you;
No one sees me.

(I was thinking about writing something I could read aloud, but instead I could only think of why I hate to read aloud - hate my words to be filtered through people's image of me. So... that's where this came from)