A short prose piece discussing the malleability and mutability of personal identity and physical presentation in the face of a wider society that demands that a person clings to one appearance or identity throughout their entire life. It also frames the idea of personal growth through the lens of a natural ecosystem, holding that a person is more of a forest of various plants rather than just one single flower.

Flesh and Bone, the components of a Body.

The soft mushy exterior melts away, drops away in chunks and rivers. It does this all the time, the flesh is malleable but the core remains. A noble blackened skeleton standing monolithic against a lake of identity. What is today’s adventure? Who is today’s person? That is for the core to decide, to sculpt its casing with the thick clay. It decides what pieces it wants and what pieces it wants to hide. The harsh hand bends the rivers into satisfactory shapes, but is it the shape that others want to see?

Perhaps not. See, most seem to believe that the core governs one single exterior shell but the majority is wrong. Their hollowness is a result of hatred and judgement, so they seek to fill their voids with other people’s pride and joy. Their drinking eyes serve to pierce others’ flesh and suck away what water wasn’t used, they condemn everyone that seems ‘different’ to the confines of one single sculpture: removing the excess material so that nothing new can be built. This is assault, this is robbery; some material is always lost in the melting and rebuilding process, that’s true, but it is a necessary loss. Growth is not growth if all of you comes along for the ride, to shed is required. But these people, those caustic and regular people who advocate for one stable, stale body denied themselves that pleasure of growing and strive to deny those around them the right of reinvention. Those seeds that would grow a sense of self were razed, and they seek to clip the growths of others, but they are not important, not right now. After all, one should not be a single flower.

No, instead you should be a forest: breathing, growing, diverse, and symbiotic.

Live in harmony with your past selves, the undergrowth, and be prepared for the blossoming of the buds. Also, be open to allow fresh new plants into your forest: an ecosystem is not self-contained, others come along and add to it. The lake deepens, the materials to create life and identity become more varied, more options arise when constructing oneself in the future. You are to bloom: change with the season, change with the winds, change with your whims. Nature must be involved in human nature and it is nature’s will to shift, transience is inherent. As the leaves change colour so too does hair, as bushes bloom and wilt so too do the moods ebb and flow. Every cell in a body is replaced every seven years and yet there are those that expect you to be the same person for seventy.

Think of your core as the trunk of a great tree: sucking from the pool of identity to rearrange its leaves. The core is solid, in a matter of speaking, but it is indecisive and playful. The bushes and flowers surrounding are your moods and dreams, the other trees your traits. Even those battered trunks and trampled ferns should be a welcomed part of your forest.

Eventually, then, as the forest begins to wilt and the flesh melts away for the final time, the bones collapse surrounded by themself. Embracing themself. The bony arms are finally free to float around and collect the melted self. To bring it all together, with love, with one grand hug, wrapped in the hues of an extended rainbow and contented in the knowledge that, day after day, they were who they chose to be.  

About Alex

They/them

Alex Cooper (They/Them) is a Stoke-on-Trent based queer and disabled English Literature graduate whose stories focus on interacting with a world that was not built with people like them in mind. Their work has previously been featured online in Tealight Press.

Instagram: @alex.thepoet / Twitter: @AlexthePoet3