Notes from the Borderline: Things I am Not

You should know that I wish not to be your borderline,

Your designated mad

I wish never to play the role you cast

“Identified patient”, identified bad

No do not categorise me angry

Nor call me names of any shape

Note that I am not your anything

I will not settle in one place

At times you’ll call me weak

“Lacking resilience”, you might refrain

Yet you’ll watch me stand up daily

Despite mountain hills of pain

And sometimes, still, you’ll paint me

With your colours black and white

Failing to see where your own

Optics are Zebra-colour striped

The colours of the dress I’ll wear

Will be a little bit of everything

My camouflage for the rapidly changing waters

In which I’m surrounded, under which I am burying

And for this, still, you’ll call me out

As lacking, too, in authenticity

Yet when I struggle to claim boundaries

You’ll scold my temper and call it rigidity

I will not fit into your order,

So, disorder, you will claim

So, I’ll shape and shift myself

Just to survive, without a name

A thing I’ll often claim with pride

Will be my lack of box or boundary

But I’ll struggle to contain myself

And heart-stained sleeves are not so easy to wear proudly

In my defence, I’ll claim

That derogated frame, of vulnerability

That thing I’ve known as long as

I’ve laid claim to subjectivity

But sense will not be something I will make:

You will not read me

For vulnerability is not something you can sell

Or discern statistically

So, I’ll often fail to read myself

For I’ll be lacking my own lens

With which to see through all the lines

You keep defining with your pens

And carried along, I’ll be

With every wave, and every stroke

Trying desperately to survive

Clinging to fragments of recycled hope

But do not call me names

Don’t dare to label me with smears

For I was never yours to claim

And I won’t be boxed in by your fears