I am

Think for a moment
About labels
Say, the label on a bottle of wine
It tries to explain the wine
By where it comes from
The year it was made
The colour and category
Perhaps even going as far as trying to
Say what it is made of (gasp!)

And even so
With all of the above
Meeting all norms of accuracy
It tells you almost nothing about the wine
What your interaction and experience with it will be like
It creates only an illusion of comfort of knowing

The label fails to capture
The exact angle in the wine glass
That the light will bounce off of the liquid
And exactly when it will start to make you smile
Or cry
Which music will go well with it
On this particular day
And where you may sit
As you hold it in your hands
And where all you will go
Once it glides down your throat

All said, the label fails to capture
Anything which has to do
with the actual experience of the wine
It has so little to do
with the essence of the content
That you wonder why bother at all

But I do know
There are those
Who label the experience of the wine
‘good’ or ‘bad’ based on the words on the label
And it is so
Because they do not see or feel or know anything
Within themselves

They fail to notice
That the words on the label capture
Not even a fraction
Of the contents of the bottle

Labels are for those
Who have so disconnected from themselves
That they need shorthand to tell them
How to feel or behave

But I am starting to remember
That label is not spirit
That jewels are beautiful
But they are not skin
And skin
Is not me

I was uncomfortable
At times trying to fit in the label
Other times trying to defy it
And yet other times to come up with my own

Many others do it so easily, I thought
They not only know their labels
They own them
They wrap them around the shape of them
Giving them form
They will tell you their roles
And badges-
Social and moral
Their religion
Their nationalism
Their profession
Their fraternity
Their defining passion
The neat boundaries

And I wondered… what’s mine
Where’s my shape
My neat boundaries

I have sat before a blinking screen many times
Asking me to define myself in short sentences,
Preferably a short string of words
And I have thought
And come up with nought
Except that same discomfort
At every word there is a counter-
“But that is not accurate”
“Not true enough”
“Does not feel important enough”
“But there is also the opposite…”

At one time
I pushed myself
“What can I say
Which is fully true and essential to me-
Just in this one moment?”
And I wrote
“Watching clouds pass by.”
And that was true enough in that moment
And I wrote and sighed in relief

I am not afraid anymore
I see labels for what they are
Not a call to meet their boundary
But a tiny sliver of a kind of truth
A self-admission of failure
Of the bottle’s label to capture
the intoxication of the spirit within

Now I realize
Labels are too tiny
So tiny that you can just let them stay
With no need to fight or justify them

I am not the labels
I am that which stays
When the labels fall away

I am not.
I am more.
I am.

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