Lizzy Burnam 🐞

One of the first poems we’re taught to write
is the “I Am” poem. It’s supposed 
to be easy. We started the lines like this: 
I am a dandelion. 
I am my momma’s bijou, her jewel. 
I am the steam in the rice cooker. 
I am a big sister and a little sister, too. 
I am a fern, wet with dew. 

I think our teachers meant 
to imply that there exists a self-self,
an authentic self that can be 
uniquely expressed using the right set 
of metaphors. But 
if there existed such a self, the only line 
we’d need to write would be: 
“I am myself. Who are you?” 

The need to compare and relate oneself 
to any number of things—
the blue shingles on the side of our childhood home, or 
the crescent coffee stain on the cover of a notebook—
suggests that the self is not my-self 
nor your-self at all, 
and instead belongs to the contextual details—
the sounds, the tastes, the colors— 
through which the amorphous perception of self
begins to take shape. 

I’m not sure exactly 
what I’m trying to say here, except that
when I say “me” in these poems, I really mean: 
a whole network of things
outside of my control.