The Understudy

I am an understudy for myself,
The second round pick for a human suit
that has more to offer the world, than I ever would.
I only got the part because my mom slept with the director.
And the world knows it, everyone does.
They read the playbill and see “UNDERSTUDY”.
They know. And I know that they know,
and I know that they know that I know that they know.
And I care, I really do, but I can’t change it any.
It’s my title. I am an “understudy”.
So I will just play the part, and try not to think about it.
Maybe the show will end soon.

I look at my face,
I look at the toilet.
I feel more akin to what I am about to flush down,
than to what I see through the mirror.
But I keep staring at the mirror -
until I get past the brown iris, past the dilated pupil.
I keep staring - and it comes.
I can see it,
my soul.
I see it shine through, as though it owned me - dominating me like a fire.
water drips from my eye, and I feel relief coming, its so close.
The water spills turn into blood, but I keep staring. I can’t leave now.
Hot with desire for freedom, I feel this is the only way in.

I don’t know - I am lost, I don’t remember,
this is all new but, at the same time, very familiar.
Like an old book that my mother used to read to me.
And now I turn its blank pages thinking, I’ve never read this, but could it be?
Why God, why am I so isolated from a world that is me?
What did I do to myself, and why do I keep doing it?
I wish I could stop - just stop and not think for a second.
But I can’t, it’s a bunch of lines that I have to read to keep my job.
If I mess this up, then what will I do - I’m a slob.
This is it then, the last call.
“I hate it,” I sob.

And it comes to me. I remember it again.
I experienced a glitch in the system, and just then,
Just then it passes through my eye, through my soul,
Like when you awake in the middle of the night to a phone call
I can’t help but be split by a second world I just saw.
A moment of inertia broken by a brick wall.
I look back down, and I scan the stall.
Where did I put it? It was here and I found nothing,
nothing at all.


Its as though I, the real me, were lost;
and someone else is wearing my Fred suit.
Things are suddenly more difficult; it’s complicated,
I don’t remember where anything is.
But I know if I were to choose who I was,
I probably wouldn’t have chosen this guy.