Yesterday, I was adoring my magnificent mind. I wanted to impress you with it. I wanted you to tell me, “Wow, now that is a mind that is close to God’s own! How did your human mind get to be so grand?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I meditate for hours standing on my head, I read tomes of sacred texts and manuals, and I practice my craft till my fingers bleed and my eyes pop out of my head. But it’s nothing really. It’s easy for me, this making-magic business,” I’d tell you, dusting off the cakes of dried blood from my fingertips where I had pricked myself a million times to ink the parchment.

“You must be gifted,” you say to me. “Such brilliance. You are a truly remarkable specimen of humanity. Oh Great One, I am awestruck as I dwell in the kaleidoscopic chambers of your psyche. As I glimpse the planets that appear upon your command. Oh Great One, you are so wise. You frighten me in the most glorious way. Your insight, your originality, your eloquence, your fecundity, so beyond the realm of simple man. It can only be witchcraft! You are special,” you will tell me.

Today, I felt my powers diminish. You told me that my tenses were inconsistent, and that my people were made of clay. “You switch from past perfect to past participle. It’s jarring. I don’t really understand what it’s about,” you say. “So I confuse you? Oh dear! But does it work?” I implore. I cannot believe I, with this mind that is so close to God’s own, am asking you, Philistine, if my ways make sense.

How dare you! Oh, how my heart aches. I build the stage, adjust the lights, attach the microphones, put on my trampiest harlot outfit, and the red clown’s nose for your pleasure, and you tell me you are not entertained? I paid for your ticket with my sanity! I spent almost an hour looking for an alternative to “trampiest” in the thesaurus, and could find no better suffix-adjective than “trampiest”.

Tomorrow, I will close my eyes. I will trace the contours of my own face to remind myself that I have one. I may be only human after all. I clasp my hands over my eyes so all is dark. I hear a small, high-pitched sound, like a little kitten trapped in the bowels of a sewer, “I am God. I really am. Let mee-owt. Let mee-owt.” I laugh and I laugh and I laugh till I cry.

Copyright® Michele Koh Morollo 2010