Someone please hold up a mirror, I want to see myself. Am I ready, am I a show pony yet, the prized peacock preserved for peeping Toms, the beautiful rocking horse on exhibition…please, if I’m the best show pony, the prettiest pony on display, the most deserving of protection I will be perfectly content? Meet me at the merry go round and we can put on a fabulous show, everyone has spare coins to push inside my pink slotted piggy bank. The bright light will be striped with dancing shadows we can move in time with– 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, on top of the blanket of red and white and yellow flashes illuminating our best angle in playground flirtations and wayward romances – but just a little bit!
I welcome you with hospitality and horse mentality only, I guess you can ride me for fun, ride fast and hard until the ride finishes, and I’ll tell you the secrets that every horse keeps! Will you keep them secret? I know your ears will be whistling and singing and vibrating with the thrill of my gallop, how it brings tears to my eyes when the game ends! But the threat of my artificial tears is much greater than the threat if my real tears.
My mock lashes can flutter really fast and there’s a fantasy I like to imitate that continues growing in the bellies of all little girls who have already had their favourite things labelled, tied up in bows and memorised, idealised, indulged… I think am ready to perform such predestined fantasies…I know how it goes, I know the rhythm and the words and the steps…I have to be the fantasy, I have no choice, I am the fantasy, it is reflected in my empty eyes - everything is metamorphosis, an abrupt and magical transformation embellished with silk and sparkle because only the merry go around when they are whisked off their feet and I might still rehearse and I get stage fright about riding into a bright future up and down over the faded bodies and sharply through the forgotten bodies, I just run faster, faster towards the image of myself in the mirror.