I am Nobody, who are you?
Are you -Nobody- too?
On Thursday I taught a lesson about an Emily Dickenson poem
Then there’s a pair of us
I stared at this
The night before I had watched a film
About her and her lifelong lover
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!
And I thought about the word “pair”
And I stood there in front of my students
And I told them I was Nobody
That my life was not one remarked on
That there was no audience
That it was about fame
And not needing it
But what I wanted to say was,
“There’s a pair of us!”
I wanted to say
You can tell, it’s okay
It’s dreary to be Somebody
When really you’re Nobody
I wanted to say
The first time I heard this poem
Was when a friend recited it in high school
And I remember
The way she said the word Nobody
Because she knew exactly what it meant
To disappear
To be glossed over
To be afterthought
To have titles affixed
And punctuations misplaced
Visions disturbed-
when a vision is all you have
I used to think I understood Emily
Pacing pacing shut up in the house
When I was a shut-in after college
When everything came to a head and I failed
And that friend from high school and I
Cried in the movie theater
Because we understood what it meant to be Nobody
After trying so hard to be somebody
But really I understood Dickenson
When I stood in the front of my classroom
And my governor was trying to pass a law that I
couldn’t tell you her lover’s name
Without written consent from a parent
Because even a century later
There is a love that dare not speak it’s name
And I wonder why he thinks such a law is necessary
When I can’t even say her name
When I can’t name myself
When I get my hair cut again
and suck in my breath before the first student arrives
One kid in the second row always commenting that he doesn’t like it
He liked it better long
As if his childish opinion had any bearing on my body
But he is only a parrot mimicking the world around him
He doesn’t mean to be cruel
But he is
And -I- must be very patient
And I mustn’t mention Susan
I can drill them on what to do
When the gunman comes
I can teach them how to be quiet
I can teach them how to calm themselves
-the boys will scoff
But sometimes the principal walks past
playing angel of death and rattles the door
-They do not cry out
I am scared to mention Susan
Have already landed myself
As topic of the Sunday sermon
And even though
I know I have at least two students
That would love to know
Just one more thing about me
All that will come out is
I am Nobody
Mother, Father, everybody calls me Nobdy
And I wish I could stab out the eye
Hot and sizzling like Odysseus
-I was allowed to talk about how that eye
Popped and sizzled like
-Hot iron plunged in water
Around the sharpened stake
I call my governor’s office
I speak to the same woman who picked up yesterday
I do not think she writes down what I have to say
-I do not sharpen a stake-
We uncovered Susan’s name in 1998
But in school I was taught that Emily was a spinster
I was told she was unlovable
That she was nervous
She was bitter
And I held her to my breast like a talisman anyway
When I heard we had known
most of my life
That she was not
I was angry
At the violence committed against me
I have learned my history piecemeal
Because I sought it out
Because like Susan’s name
It has been erased
We leave it out of textbooks
We give time easy names
And the Somebodies write themselves into heroes
And they erase and they package and they market
And then when a Nobody dares to not be silent
They repeat the lies they told us
But I remember Hirschfield and Haye and Milk
And Lisa Ben and Sapho and Kahlo
Mattachine and Bilitis
And I remember that there’s never been just one
So I put out my secret signs
And I hope that it is enough
Because I know that if you play at being Nobody long enough
You lose your name