The Truth Project

Because I get lost in metaphors they don't understand. My stories live in daydreams written in verse I never, ever share. Unfit for lighthearted dinner conversation.

I couldn't understand why none of them needed to say something a million times in their heart before they spoke it with their tongue.

I've been cut open and spread out so everyone can see how every moment my heart pumps is a moment it bleeds.

What is it that you learned?" I smile. I've thought a lot about this. How my question this year was to understand how ancestry shapes me. I think ancestry only shapes you if you want it to. How you can go your whole life never knowing what you were meant to be and never knowing what you could have been and still be you. How family is the thing that shapes you. The nurturing from the people closest to you and the experiences you share are the things that make you whole. I learned, through this project, that the man who contributed to my DNA isn't the one who made me who I am. That was the man who raised me, who watched my first steps, and encouraged me every step after- even when it took me away from him. I shrug, a shrug that almost hurts, diminishing the last few months to an essay question. "Nothing I didn't already know, deep down.

no matter what decorate the branches, stretch out beneath the ground -intertwined with other trees that might not look the same but have identical systems of growth. Turn instead to what has always been. Crawl into the shade of the trees that protect you, collapse beneath the canopy of what you know is true. Feel how you are loved and love them back.