BluestoneReview

Regional and Ethnic Lit, or How M.Butterfly Saved My Life By Cor Blevins I knew myself as a child, and knowing myself was like knowing the mountains, The smoky wet air after a summer storm, And finding your home from the highest peak in town and saying “That’s me, I live there.” I knew myself as a woman, first, And that may have been the hardest part Knowing how women fight their whole lives to be heard, I didn’t want to lay down that gun. I knew myself as an egg, Hiding in a shell fragile and Brittle, waiting to break. Sitting on the hill outside of Rish playing Song LiLing, a woman playing a man playing a woman or A man playing a woman playing a man playing a woman, or; I knew myself, but knowing that others around me might know sent me scurrying back to the safety of that half-cracked eggshell of that loaded gun, of words that weren’t mine but that I wrote myself. I knew myself as a writer, and They knew me too, grinding it into powder. I knew my body, but only After I sculpted and shifted and broke the eggshell and wrote the world a letter and heard everyone call back “We see you, You are safe with us here.” But only as much as I allowed them to know while I dreamt about taking that eggshell In my fist, cracking it into shards,

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