In the pitch black of the early hours when most would rather still be sleeping, I stubbed my toe on my authentic self.
I shouldn’t have been surprised, given that it’s been smack dab in the center of my room since before I was born and I thought I knew it so well. But It’s grown bigger than I remembered—and more substantial, like cardboard boxes stacked to the ceiling filled with unread books.
I could not see it in the dark, for my thoughts were still in the dream world where officers in blue suits were chasing me for breaking the law. But I could feel it, in the exquisite pain that even as it throbbed informed me in English plain as day that I had not broken the law—but had broken free.
So farewell, officers in blue, and goodbye, too, to unmerited guilt, to false evidence no matter how real it appears and to all those within and without who ever mistook my authentic self for a coat rack.
