my skin tingled and I felt the way
I felt as a teenager
by myself at the carnival for the first time.
I met my friends and
I laughed with them
and for once
I didn't look at them the way my father would,
greeting them with a sense of
superficial joviality
like that of a campy game show host
while later giving a sermon on how
I shouldn't associate myself with
the people in this world I care for most.
I never wanted to be my
father's kind of people,
those who sacrifice
identity for conformity
and integrity for acceptance.
Yes, as I stood there,
midst the cheap Christmas lights and
heavenly homemade haluski,
I understood myself and I understood
who, when unbridled, I truly was.
My immortal discovery elicited the same sensation
of truly knowing, for the first time, that I can be
whoever
whatever
wherever
I decide I want to be.
I undertake my own grassroots metamorphosis
as I shed my former self
and burst forth into an idiosyncratic life
(entirely my own)
free from my
inhibitions and insecurities.
I came. I saw. I lived.