I was staring at a blank piece of notebook paper with at least a thousand ideas swirling into my head as my eraser dragged across the blank page, erasing nothing at all.



Distorting or geometrical illusions: distortions of size, length, position, or curvature. I knew all about that concept; thoughts and memories congealing making a soup of mixed tastes and feelings to drip to my throat with the agonizingly slow movement of a thick syrup, forcing itself through my unwilling body.



I wanted to write a story. I wanted to write something beautiful, as if it could block out all my troubles and I could at last feel the glow of success warming my heart.



I am tired. Are you tired? We are all tired. This is not my masterpiece. This is hopelessness speaking, guiding the hand with the one lacquered, chipped thumbnail because I thought I knew how to speak of love and beauty.



Hopelessness says, where are you going? What are you doing? I’ve heard those words from countless people that I have loved; My father, when I walked all the way down Alta in kindergarten, light up shoes smacking pavement with the first sparks of defiance. My mother; when every report card arrives, the predictable failure printed in unforgiving block letters, A through F, an alphabet of six, an even number because the odds are always against you and me. My brother; when I turn on the bedroom light at midnight because I can’t stand being in the dark anymore.



I wanted to write something beautiful. I wanted to be beautiful, not only on the surface but in the very depths which I bury myself, under a face that is not mine, not me, under flesh, under bone.



Where do I end, then? I never know. On the another anti-climactic note? Or do I fill endless pages with the one wish I have; rambling, broken sentences, a bit like myself.



Who knows? Nobody.



Who am I? Nobody- so it seems I know the answer after all.