To Marilyn Monroe – Girl

Dear Marilyn,

The camera does strange things to you. Makes your lips quiver and your eyes twitch.

By you I mean me.

I work in a place where they need actors for free sometimes, even actors that aren’t actors will do. They dress me up like a girl, do up my hair, decorate my skin with peach paste and flair.

I don’t mind really. I don’t enjoy it either. But later when I look back, the nothingness I feel will be etched with fondness brought by nostalgia, fondness there never was to begin with.

Sorry, I tend to stray from the point. Point being, let’s return to the point of retreat.

For a moment there, a moment held in time, clasped in its palm like a miniscule gem, I was a girl. A girl as we know girls to be.

Pretty, thoughtless, sharp and melancholy.

A girl like you. A girl unlike me.

Time made a girl out of you too. Changed your name, the fibres of your dress, the pores in your skin. The quintessence of your memory.

Were you a girl then, Marilyn?

A female, a princess, a maiden, a fucking damsel in distress?

Pretty, thoughtless, sharp and melancholy.

Here we stop, because here we get to the point. Here we zip-lock our premeditations and wayward emotions. Here we rephrase.

Girl is a mountain, a giant.

She is invincible.

Pretty, thoughtless, sharp and melancholy.

Bold, broken, reckless and spectacular.

That’s the girl we are, aren’t we? That’s the girl we see.

I’m not sexist/feminist/anarchist or anything fancy like that.
I’m a Girl.

A girl who is confused, bewildered, contradicted and exhausted by everything having to be labelled and put up on the metaphorical bulletin board. I DON’T WANT TO BE pretty, thoughtless, sharp and melancholy.

What if I want to be the nothingness I feel? What if I want to exist metaphysically? This time, not metaphorically.

I’m tired of defining every little thing. ESPECIALLY. Especially, the girl I want to be.

Aren’t you?

That’s all.

Love,
Girl