Bold, bold, almost iridescent.

Wait don't get clean
Get dirty.
Play with me while nobody's looking
Is it still guilty and wrong?
Look at me, stain-mouth
Wine-kisser,
Long summer skipper.
Dirty black eye, like a pirate.
You know you wanna.

I used to love doing these little self-portraits. Now, I just feel weird. Old. Out of practice.

But maybe?

Maybe.

If I try to bend, I don't gotta break. And what do you do when nobody's looking? Kick your feet up for summer break, for life, for freedom. Kick up the turntable. Really, properly taste life. I've been missing my vinyls while in Prague, so now I'm.
Taking my time?
A little r'n'r inside my own house. A little kiss of summer. A mouthful of good wine.

That's the stuff, and here we are.

Bold, bold, almost iridescent.

I enjoy play. With the image, with my self, with the way i imagine my self. I guess if i gotta just pick one, I'm this the most often:

Torn always between worlds and two different lives. Guess it's not for nothing that's a main theme of the book I'm writing. You get to know yourself properly through writing. A real, gut-to-rights kinda knowing you can't quite shake afterwards. Or at least, not entirely.

The kind of self-knowing you're not guaranteed to like.

But you get to knowing yourself through a lens in a different way, and I like twisting the way I see myself into the way others see me, and then backwards. Do you think about that? What people see when they look at you? And do you ever do that game where you start walking different, acting different, holding your face different to more closely match what they wish you were?

I do.

But I don't let it play out too long, or too often. In the end, I'm too keen coming back to myself. Trust myself. Am loyal enough to who I am to let myself tease the world sometimes.

When we smile, my cousin and I look like monkeys.
I've got a woman in my class who's got these kinds of similar features, the kind where a proper-borne smile makes you look like a little monkey. Happy, but not beautiful by traditional means. That, also, making my peace with.

'Cause nothing can quite rival being this happy, can it?

Hello, playful.

What you looking at?

Always got an eye on myself, though, always.

For me, summer.

For you?

Thanks for watching me play. Imma go take the make-up off now, knowing next time that tune comes on the playlist, I don't gotta feel like a scoundrel no more for failing to take appropriate self-portraits.