~*~

My name is more of me than I am.

It was branded on me from the moment I was born--pressed into my hair, beaming forth from my eyes. My skin has taken on the very shade of those two syllables. I look at myself in the mirror and don't even recognize who I am anymore.

Only what I'm called.

If I don't know who I am, then I really can't blame those who don't bother to look past the surface of everything I'm supposed to be. I don't know if there is anything left of me.

I was born of a thousand generations of pure, thin blood, and their quicksilver eyes make a habit of watching... of judging me, whenever my path crosses with one of their portraits.

I will never be what they want me to be.

I am drowning in the ocean of their tradition.

I never knew I wasn't free until the day I reached towards the sky and found it just beyond my fingertips, the weight of my history pressing down on my shoulders.

I was not the first.

But.

I'm afraid that I will be the last.

~*~