Written while watching killer whales on Animal Planet

all my life i had been under the impression that i had seen edward scissorhands
until last night at one AM it came on tbs
and i discovered that i have been fooling myself.
i guess i just assumed i had seen it.
after all, every living breathing human i have come across
in all my sixteen years
has.

i must have convinced myself a decade ago that
because everyone knows edward scissorhands
i know edward scissorhands.
(wrong.)
last night at one AM
i experienced afresh the pale-faced flyaway-haired wonder that is johnny depp in a leather suit
and by three i knew that i was living a lie.

i wonder now what other of my experiences may have been figments of my overactive assumption.
did i never jump a rope ladder at age six
and break a wrist it took five casts to repair?
was i not baptised in fifth grade in front of god and two hundred devoted christians?
was i never kissed goodbye by my personal hero
before he moved several hundred miles out of reach?

maybe i have never knelt in wood or leaves
and put words on paper
in sentences and fragments, phrases, clauses,
currents of musings and narratives
of my experiences
any or all of which
may never have happened.

--sara st.