DRAFT: adornments.

We are on grass beside the willow. The tree is unmoving in my memory but the branches were surely in motion. I imagine them long and loose, lapping at the air. Occasionally cracking like whips.

But I don’t remember. I’m eight and it’s playtime.
It’s the girls that occupy my mind.

“What is that?” she says.

My Taijitu earrings are new. The paper emblem sealed beneath a clear, domed layer of plastic.

I don’t really know.

“They are the Ying Yang,” I say.

The Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate is a bit much for eight-year-old me. But I like what I think it means. It’s familiar and intriguing, and my mum seems to know about it. I know she likes my earrings.

I scan for acceptance from the other girls, the way you do when you are eight and in the playground. I wait. No one says anything. The girl who asked me laughs and says she doesn’t like them. I want to withdraw my enthusiasm from the air and erase the exchange.

I never wore the earrings again.

//

We are in a temporary classroom. A wretched fluorescence. Attempted uniformity, cheap chairs and too many teenagers. The smell of bodies, on a budget, trying not to smell like bodies. The teacher is trying to teach us. A collective no thanks. I’m thirteen and it’s double DT. It’s the boys that occupy my mind this time.

“Why are you wearing those?” he says.

My playboy earrings are new. The Bunny emblem is silver. They have a diamante for the eye. Jesus Christ.

I don’t really know.

I ignore him and reach for my pencil case. Move it around. Beg for an unbothered aura. Redirect my attention to a different boy. I am subtle enough. It works.

I so want him and his question to be unimportant.

The complexities of Playboy and who makes being admired valuable anyway? remain out of reach to thirteen-year-old me. A simple black and white symbol. Again, I like what I think it means. For reasons I don’t question, I want to be seen as the kind of girl who is wanted by men.

I would wear them again.

//

I am no longer in school. It’s present day and I sit in a borrowed home. No one has asked what or why I am wearing earrings in a long time.

I see I have two messy memories. And I have questions. What am I wearing through the pierced part of me. Why?

Perhaps I am reaching to invent a neat story arc where there isn’t one. The writing is happening because, although it feels futile, I still want a final answer about who I am.

Where have I been? What have I been up to? What does it mean? But really, what does it mean?

Can I answer the why yet?

I look for answers that would burn all my frayed edges. An answer that would make one simple straight edged shape.

But oh my god, there are so many shapes.

The little me that said ‘Ying Yang’ with a sense of unfinished awe, and the bigger little me who said nothing because she wanted to be perfectly desired, are both in me. Oh, they are both in me.

I like the one who speaks.

True, she may mispronounce. But I like the one who dares to express an unfinished self. Who gets excited and thinks that all things are ultimately divine. And know that all things are inseparably, supremely messy. There is always a dot of Yin in Yang and, likewise, a trace of Yang in Yin.

I like less the part of that one who is still too young and too shy to express her own interests.

As for the one who is mute when asked why she wants to be seen as fuckable?

She lives in me largely. I know of her pain well. The layers and the depths. I am working with her.

Or I am neglecting her.

Or I am employing her tricks.

I am far from where I want to be. But things are always in motion. And now is also good.