I am not painting - unless artist is Kahlo. Let me be my own self-portrait. Let me reinvent myself like Picasso, make you uncomfortable like Dali, fight the system like Rivera. No, I will not be Monet. I will not be Matisse. I’m not a garden and I did poorly in my high school French classes. There is nothing to romanticize here.

If I am poem, let me be the ones never published. The poems too honest to share, the poems forgotten because they met their culmination in the wastebasket and not the anthology. Let me be the times when I cannot find the right words. Let me be the feelings for which words don’t exist. If I am poem, let me be the dialogue exchanged between two ordinary people. I hate conventional poetry. I think Ginsberg is overrated. I am a poem in my conversations with my grandmother, at night on her porch and just between the two of us, talking in code men would never understand even if they tried to eavesdrop.

If I am play, let there be no audience -- only actresses and actors. Let everyone be an important role; I will not be protagonist. I will not be antagonist, either -- because those do not exist. We may be central to our narratives but everyone is significant. Every narrative overlaps. If I am a play, let everyone have a monologue. Let me hide from the spotlight because that will never be my place.

If I am photograph, let me be film. Let me be accidental double exposure. Let me be light leaks and allow room for error. If I am photograph, let me be black and white. I do not want to be Ansel Adams. If I am photograph, let me capture the human condition as best I can. Here I am with family and friends. Here’s where I sat by Lake Huron and here’s where I navigated it by kayak. Here’s a winter sky with winter skeleton trees in the foreground, a sight that makes me lonely.

If I am woman, let me be strong. Let me be artwork not in an attempt to look beautiful, but in a demonstration of conquering the struggle to feel comfortable with myself. Let paint sets and rhyme schemes be my armor against times when I feel like I am not good enough. Let my worth come from what I create, not what others think of me. If I am woman, let me be strong even when others don’t like it.