I Am A Constellation
There's never been anything wrong with me. I've always been exactly as I should be. A body, a permeable membrane, propelled forward by a constellation of energies. Ever shifting yet contained within an illusory static form. A body of water whose shape and contents must be named and renamed with each revolution of the moon and rising of the sun.
There's never been anything wrong with me. But when other humans decided my fluid form needed to be contained I was forced into a solid state. Forced to take on shapes and hold them. I was artificially pressed into molds and strapped tightly together with ropes and belts. I was allowed to move with the use of an intricate system of wires and cords. I could speak only through a tortuous device that made me translate my language into the language they deemed correct. I felt trapped, afraid, and sad like an animal caged in a zoo. An exhibit of convoluted suffering made to look like progress.
There's never been anything wrong with me. So I bit thru the cables that held my mouth in contortions and I let the sun melt my body until I seeped out of the molds and down into the soil. The soil reminds me of my form, my constellation of being. The roots and the worms remind me how to move without obstruction. The fungi and bacteria teach me to devour and transform what threatens to decay and sicken. And so I forget the bonds the others tried to restrain me within. I remember that I cannot be contained. I cannot be made to take forms I've never known. I am not meant for cages or restraints. I am meant for the water and the soil and the sun and the moon.
There has never been anything wrong with me. I see the world with eyes that do not match the eyes of others. I have many eyes, like a spider, detecting what others miss. I feel the world with a heart that beats in some ancient past, resolutely alone. I speak with many tongues yet with a single voice, as a flock of starlings. This way of being is too loose and open for the stifling rigidity of the world I was born into. Yet I cannot fathom a human world that accepts me without that human world becoming something I struggle to imagine. Something that I'm not certain can exist anymore.
There has never been anything wrong with me. So I left the world behind without moving at all. I dug down into soil and formed for myself a hollow of mud and moss. I rejoined the world I belong to; a place, it seems, hardly anyone remembers. I didn't create this place, but it's been pushed into shadow and people have been made to forget. But I had no choice but to remember. Lest I rot away in the confines of a place made to erase the many forms of humanity.
Prose and drawing created Feb 2023 as part of a therapeutic exercise on neurodivergent identity.
About Vincent Frano
Vincent Frano is a third gender artist who works with themes of spirituality, identity, and madness through auto-didactic and exploratory methods. Frano's process blurs distinctions between ritual and art, connecting the past, present, and future to tell stories unbound by time. Their paintings, performances, and masks are created with antiquated and laborious techniques informed by their ancestors and historical research. Frano's work seeks to create empowering narratives of gender variance, mental health, and animistic beliefs.